Press Release, 8.09.2020

The Zelenodolsk City Court removed from the municipal elections in the Osinovo town, Tatarstan, all representatives of the Dioxinovo movement who oppose the construction of an incineration plant in the settlement. On 7 September, the court removed from municipal elections 13 candidates, including Ruslan Zinatullin, leader of the Yabloko party in Tatarstan, and Yelena Izotova, Chair of the regional branch of the Green Russia faction of the Yabloko party in Tatarstan.

Anvar Ashurov, 25-year-old candidate, filed a claim for withdrawal. The pretext was the web-site Dioxinovo.net, which published photographs of candidates and abstracts from their programmes.  According to Ashurov, this was election campaigning. He said that at market prices, such a page on the web-site cost about 22,325 roubles, while the limit of a municipal candidate’s electoral fund was 10,000 roubles. Similar copy-paste claims were made against all the thirteen opposition candidates.

“We believe that this is a politically motivated decision, which is designed to prevent the participation in the race of the candidates who are popular with Osinovo residents. Because they understand that with a high degree of probability they [the candidates from the authorities] will lose in a fair fight. The grounds on which we are removed from elections do not stand up to scrutiny. There are only speculations and distortions,” the Chairman of the Tatarstan branch of Yabloko stressed. “We will submit an appeal to the Supreme Court. We have not received a written ruling of the court yet [so that to be able to appeal]. And the fight is not over yet,” Zinatullin said.

“I have not asked anyone to create a web page or a website for me on the Internet. The court considered that I had deliberately placed my information there, allegedly hiding payment for services from the electoral commission. The plaintiff did not even appear in court, members of the territorial electoral commission were looking down, the prosecutors supported everything, and the judges behaved arrogantly. The assessment of the web-site was overstated, not credible. It looked as if they were scared [of competing against the opposition canidates],” Yelena Izotova, Chair of Yabloko’s Green Russia Faction in Tatarstan noted.

The following candidates were removed from the elections: Ruslan Zinatullin, Marat Munasipov, Gulnaz Ravilova, Tatyana Yurova, Irina Nikiforova, Ilgiz Khromkin, Andrei Kitov, Yelena Izotova, Alexander Zheleznov-Lipets, Yevgeny Markov, Yelena Biktasheva, Alexei Alekseyev and Nikolay Yemelyanov.

The Tatarstan branch of Yabloko, together with environmentalists, civil activists and the “Tatarstan Movement Against the Construction of Incinerators, for the Separate Collection, Sorting and Recycling of Waste” has been fighting against the government’s plans to build a first-class hazard facility in the Osinovo townt for more than two years. The regional office of Yabloko was one of the initiators of the republican referendum on waste facilities.

The election campaign in Tatarstan was accompanied by pressure on Yabloko activists. Thus, Gulnaz Ravilova, activist and candidate for deputy of the Osinovsky rural settlement, who was sick with COVID was arrested for five days for a picket in which she did not participate.

It should be noted that earlier the lists of candidates from the Yabloko party were removed from the elections to the regional parliaments of the Chelyabinsk, Kurgan and Ryazan regions, as well as the city councils of Ivanovo, Smolensk, Zheleznogorsk (the Krasnoyarsk Territory), and Kaspiisk (the Republic of Dagestan). All Yabloko single-mandate candidates to the Kurgan Regional Duma, as well as to the City Duma of Tambov, Krasnodar, Sochi and Lipetsk, were not registered in the elections in single-mandate constituencies. Some single-mandate the candidates were not registered in the elections to the City Duma of Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Orel, Voronezh, Astrakhan, Shakhty (Rostov Region), Samara and Cheboksary.

In addition, Oleg Mandrykin, Yabloko’s candidate for Governor of the Arkhangelsk region, was not registered in the elections.