Today, Maxim Kruglov, the current Moscow City Duma deputy and candidate for constituency No. 13 (Moscow districts Alexeievsky, Butyrsky, Maryina Roshcha, Ostankino, and Rostokino), will hand over to the district electoral commission about 5,660 signatures required for his registration in the race. Also, Kirill Goncharov (district No. 42), Maria Chuprina (district No. 43) and Anna Shatunovskaya-Burno (district No. 14) will bring the collected signatures to the electoral commissions of their districts.

Commentary from Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov:

“This campaign showed two things. First, even in the conditions of massive propaganda, in an atmosphere of fear and repression, dozens of thousands of people were not afraid to openly speak out for peace and freedom, for the humanisation of society, politics, the economy, for normal relations with our neighbours and the whole world. This year this is the second largest anti-war action after the collection of 1.3 million signatures for Grigory Yavlinsky’s participation in the presidential elections.

Second, we have empirically proven that the collection of signatures is an institution representing a barrier for participation in elections, which during periods of extreme summer heat, the season when people go to summer cottages and vacations, as well as an epidemic of personal data fraud, has no other function.

It is necessary to cancel the collection of signatures for all registered parties and their candidates, change the system of representative power in Moscow and the regions, in particular, return elections based on party lists and increase the number of Moscow City Duma deputies to 150.

We thank everyone who signed for the Yabloko candidates, who supported our stance for peace and for the ceasefire agreement. We are grateful to the volunteers and staff of election headquarters who spent two and a half weeks collecting signatures in hard political and climatic conditions.

We will not give up and will continue our fight for peace and freedom.

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