Press Release, 24.05.2021

Photo: Ksenia Sverdlova / Photo by the Press Service of the Saratov branch of Yabloko

Police officers came to the office of the Saratov branch of Yabloko. The police said that they were looking for the Chair of the regional branch of the party, Ksenia Sverdlova, so that to bring her to administrative responsibility, but refused to cite the article of the Administrative Code, according to which they plan to bring the politician to responsibility.

Activists of the Saratov branch of Yabloko believe that it may be about the provisions of Article 5.10 of the Administrative Code (“Conducting election campaigning, campaigning on referendum issues outside the campaign period and in places where campaigning is prohibited by the legislation on elections and referendums”). It should be noted that the State Duma has recently increased fines by several times under this article.

Fedor Demyanchuk, Press Secretary of the Saratov branch of Yabloko, notes that on 16 May, on the last day of voting at the by-election of deputies of the Saratov Regional Duma, the Territorial Electoral Commission received a complaint from a self-nominated candidate (his photo was absent from the information posters at polling stations ) on Yabloko candidate Ksenia Sverdlova for her stream on Instagram.

The complaint ran, in particular, that Ksenia Sverdlova used the word “achieved”, which “creates a positive image of the party that nominated the candidate”. The regional branch of the party emphasises that the live broadcast was devoted to the organisation of public control over the voting, and there was no campaigning.

It should be noted that for the first time Yabloko received more than 10 per cent in the elections to the Saratov Regional Duma. Yabloko’s candidates ran in three of the four vacant single-mandate constituencies. Ksenia Sverdlova, Chair of the regional branch of Yabloko, ran in the Volzhsky district, Ilya Kozlyakov, Deputy Chairman of the party branch, ran in Kalininsky district, and Dmitry Lepensky ran in Marksovsky district. The total number of voters in the three districts was 250,000 people.