Press Release, 25.06.2025

Photo: Alexander Shishlov at the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg /Photo by the Press Service of the St.Petersburg parliament

The Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St.Petersburg has once again submitted to the St.Petersburg parliament its initiative to return the passive electoral right (the right to be elected) to citizens recognised as “foreign agents”. Here goes the full transcript of the speech of the faction leader Alexander Shishlov.

“At the past meeting, this bill was excluded from the agenda at the suggestion of Vsevolod Belikov, who stated that the Constitutional Court allegedly recognised the law on depriving “foreign agents” of their voting rights as constitutional. This is not so: the corresponding law was adopted in May 2024 and the Constitutional Court did not consider it.

The Constitutional Court has repeatedly formulated a legal position on the inadmissibility of discrimination against “foreign agents”, indicating that this status does not imply a negative assessment of the “foreign agent” by the state, or a negative attitude towards his/her political activities, or a desire to discredit him/her.

However, the opposite happens in practice: “foreign agents” are subject to both discrimination and discreditation. They are, among other things, prohibited from being elected to public authorities and from being deputies. Because of this, the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg lost one of its most prominent deputies, who invariably enjoyed the support of voters – [Yabloko’s] Boris Vishnevsky.

Today, “foreign agent” is becoming a political stigma for those who do not receive foreign funding or foreign support, but do not agree with the policies of the authorities.

According to Yabloko, all legislation on foreign agents is unconstitutional and should be repealed.

But today, we are talking in our bill only about the part that relates to electoral rights. Yabloko insists on consideration [of our bill] because “foreign agents” are not included in the exhaustive list of those who, according to the Constitution, have no right to be elected.

The path to free elections begins with the restoration of the rights of all who have a constitutional basis for participating in elections.”

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The parliamentary pro-government majority ignored the vote on including the issue on the agenda. Eight deputies voted “for”, four were against, one abstained, and the rest did not participate in the vote.