Press Release, 7 August 2026

Photo: Screenshot from Emilia Slabunova’s speech at Sandarmokh, 5 August 2026

On the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression, 5 August, representatives of Karelian Yabloko and candidates for deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia visited the Sandarmokh tract, a forest massive where thousands of victims of Stalin’s regime were shot and buried in 1937-1938. They read out the names of victims of repression and laid flowers at the memorial.

“This is a place where the pain of history is felt with particular intensity,” Karelian Yabloko noted, adding that members of the party delegation had laid flowers at the memorial and read out the names of those who had been shot. “Every name is a reminder of the value of human life and of the impermissibility of terror.”

Thousands of people, fates and names will remain at Sandarmokh forever. It is our duty to remember this, and our duty to prevent such tragic events from happening again, Emilia Slabunova, member of Yabloko’s Federal Political Committee, deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia, and Honoured Teacher of Russia, stressed in her address following the reading of the names of the repressed.

“I would like to point out that this site is a cultural heritage object with the status of a historical site,” said Emilia Slabunova. “All the state documents establishing the subject of protection and the status of this site do exist. It is under state protection. The Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Federal Security Service of the Republic of Karelia were actively involved in establishing this site. Following all the expeditions of the Russian Military Historical Society in 2018 and 2019, and after all the expert assessments, in 2021 the Russian Ministry of Culture changed the site’s status from a ‘monument’ to a ‘site of historical interest.’ And even after all the expeditions and the change of status, the subject of protection at this site has not changed. This is the site of the execution of victims of the political repressions of 1937–1938.”

Photo: The delegation of Karelian Yabloko, 5 August 2026 / Photo by the Yabloko regional branch

Almost all of the people who remain at Sandarmokh forever, including those whose names Emilia Slabunova read out at Sandarmokh on 5 August, have been rehabilitated, including by the Public Prosecutor’s Office. “Desecrating this memory is impermissible,” the politician stressed. This statement was made after Karelian Yabloko’s remembrance event came under provocation: unnamed activists in balaclavas and military uniform, carrying Russian flags, attempted to disrupt it.

The event at the Sandarmokh tract, at which representatives of Yabloko and European diplomats held a ceremony dedicated to the memory of the victims of the repressions of the 1930s, was impermissible, Sergei Mironov, leader of the A Just Russia party and State Duma deputy, told the news portal NEWS.ru the same day. He accused the participants of the event of inflating the figures for the number of people repressed.

“Sandarmokh has endured another attack of ‘black shirts,'” Karelian Yabloko said. “The pines trembled, as did the souls of those killed and all reasonable people who witnessed it. And they have only grown more resolute in their determination to overcome this darkness, to preserve memory, and to demand a state and legal assessment of those terrible years.”