Press Release, 26.10.2022

Photo: Boris Vishnevsky / Photo by the Press Service of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg

Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg and Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko party, spoke from the parliamentary rostrum when St.Petersburg MPs were considering the draft budget of St. Petersburg for 2023.

Vishnevsky noted that the present draft budget of St.Petersburg could not be called the budget for the fulfillment of social obligations, but the budget for their reduction and “freezing”. “It is a budget that expands the possibilities for the executive branch to spend money uncontrollably, and, first of all, on what is connected with the special military operation and its consequences” Vishnevsky said. He emphasized in his speech, that taxpayers’ money should have been used for solution of the city problems, rather than financing the costs caused by the special military operation launched on 24 February.

When Boris Vishnevsky reminded his colleagues that the mention of a special military operation in quotation marks was considered by the police as discrediting the armed forces despite the fact that the very notion of the special military operation had not been defined in the Russian law and was used to repress the opposition, Alexander Belsky, the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, turned off the microphone for Vishnevsky. The Yabloko faction voted against the draft budget in the first reading.

BORIS VISHNEVSKY

is Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko Party, member of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee and Bureau, and an MP of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg