Press Release, 16.07.2024

Photo: Plastic signs at the Simonovskoye cemetery in Staraya Russa / Photo by the Novgorod branch of Yabloko

The Novgorod regional branch of the Yabloko party sent an appeal to the Public Prosecutor General’s Office regarding the failure of the authorities to complete works to create a memorial in Staraya Russa to soldiers who died in the World War II. The memorial at the Simonovskoye cemetery, where about 30,000 Soviet soldiers are buried, was opened in October 2023. An inspection in July 2025, which was carried out by the Novgorod Yabloko, showed that in the process of creating the memorial, the administration of Staraya Russa arbitrarily refused to carry out critically important works provided for by the design project and replaced materials with cheaper analogues.

Yabloko’s appeal to the supervisory authority runs that the works which cost about 23 million roubles, do not correspond to the design project. Thus, the administration neither did the works on wall carving, nor installed granite slabs with the numbers of mass graves and dates of burial, nor an information stand. However, there appeared a figure of a soldier made from a composite material cheaper than granite.

In addition, tombstone plaques with information about the buried were made from scrap materials – cement slabs, construction boards and plastic – and not by professionals, and they are in poor condition.

Viktor Shalyakin, a member of the Novgorod Yabloko Bureau and armed forces veteran, previously contacted the regional public prosecutor’s office in connection with the state of the mass graves in Staraya Russa, but no measures were taken.

“The military memorial in Staraya Russa is a terrible hack and an insult to the memory of those who died during the World War II, a monstrous devaluation of the heroism of the people and an immoral budget spending,” Anna Cherepanova, the leader of the Novgorod Yabloko and Deputy Chair of Yabloko, commented on the results of the inspection.

The Novgorod branch of Yabloko asks the Public Prosecutor General’s Office to conduct an investigation into the failure of the administration of Staraya Russa to complete a significant part of the works on creating a memorial at the Simonovsky cemetery and deviations from the design project in part that was completed, take the measures of prosecutorial response, and if signs of a crime are detected, send the materials to the investigative authorities.