Yabloko leader met with residents, the Governor, and visited a waste sorting plant and an animal shelter

Press Release, 4.08.2021

Photo: Nikolai Rybakov and residents of Novosibirsk / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Nikolai Rybakov, Сhairman of the Yabloko party, visited Novosibirsk within the framework of his election tour to the Russian regions.

Rybakov spent the working day with the candidates for the State Duma from the Novosibirsk region – environmentalist Natalya Chubykina, and Dmitry Shabanov, entrepreneur and teacher of  the Novosibirsk State University, and Grigory Grishin, a member of the Yabloko Bureau.

Photo (from left to right): Natalia Chubykina, Nikolai Rybakov, and Grigory Grishin / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Nikolai Rybakov stated the day with a visit to the Protect Animals shelter, which houses 300 dogs and 200 cats. All these animals are taken from the streets, vaccinated, and disabled dogs are helped to feel the joy of life again – run briskly again. According to the head of the shelter Yelena Starkova, the shelter always needs food for animals and funds for veterinarian services.

In the photo: Nikolay Rybakov at the Protect Animals shelter / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The Yabloko party has developed a special programme that provides for a number of measures to protect the rights of animals. The programme runs, among other things, that it is necessary to create municipal shelters for stray animals in every regional centre of Russia with the responsibility of rescuing, treating and neutering animals, introducing neutering of stray animals and finding owners for them as the only measures to regulate their numbers.

After visiting the animal shelter, Nikolai Rybakov met with Novosibirsk residents on the issue of infill development. Residents of 132 Krasnoyarskaya street face a situation when the city administration absolutely unlawfully approved the construction of a high-rise building right in front of their nine-story house. In such dense development the residents will have no room to move freely and walk in the yard with their children. After the new high-rise is built, the windows of the residents will be facing the windows of this house. The high-rise will always block the sun and there will be practically no daylight in the apartments of the nine-story house.

Photo: Nikolai Rybakov and residents of 132 Krasnoyarskaya street / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The residents told Rybakov that they turned to all possible instances: the public prosecutor’s office, the Governor, and the Mayor. Their appeals and complaints did not bring any results. Meanwhile, a foundation pit has already been dug by their house and the construction is in full swing. The Yabloko party Chairman promised to try and help to resolve their issue.

Photo: Nikolai Rybakov and Governor Andrei Tavnikov

On the same day, Rybakov raised the problem of infill development at his working meeting with the Governor of the Novosibirsk region Andrei Travnikov. In addition, the Yabloko leader discussed the problems of waste processing and air pollution in Novosibirsk.

Yabloko’s legislative initiatives in the field of protecting the rights and freedoms of citizens were discussed with Nina Shalabayeva, the Ombudsperson of the Novosibirsk region. Rybakov and Shalabayeva also discussed environmental initiatives, the upcoming elections to the State Duma, the three-day voting and the legality of canceling video surveillance at the polling stations.

Photo: meeting with Nina Shalabayeva, the Human Rights Ombudsperson of the Novosibirsk Region / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Nikolai Rybakov and Nina Shalabayeva also discussed cooperation in the implementation of legislative initiatives in the environmental sphere and the adoption of a law on the prevention of domestic violence.

The head of Yabloko also visited the waste sorting complex “Arktika City”, where waste is brought from all over Novosibirsk, and then is separated into fractions. On the average, one garbage truck can pick up about 80-200 garbage cans, and all the company’s trucks can remove waste from almost a million people in one month.

To improve the situation with waste sorting in Novosibirsk, Nikolai Rybakov offered to use the experience of Akademgorodok, where instead of two containers “recyclable materials” and “mixed waste” garbage containers for several fractions of garbage are provided: plastic, glass, paper and metal. He recommended that the company, together with the city authorities, look at the example of one district, how efficiently this pilot project develops, and if the experiment is successful, deliver such containers throughout Novosibirsk, and later in the entire region.

Photo: Nikolay Rybakov visiting the waste sorting complex “Arktika City” / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Before leaving Novosibirsk, Rybakov went to the Yeltsovka-1 River, which flows in the very centre of the city. Here, developers want to build another high-rise on the site of a garden, as this land is very expensive land. Nikolai Rybakov suggested to environmental activists a method to fight the arbitrary rule: “In such a situation, the best way out is to conduct an awareness campaign with the residents of nearby houses, involve them in solving the problem, tell them what they will lose when the garden is cut a buildings are built instead of it, and what they will gain when the site is improved for walks. In my practice, there are many examples when initiative groups managed to defend green areas,” Rybakov noted.

Photo: Nikolay Rybakov on the banks of the Yeltsovka-1 river / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

In addition, the head of Yabloko met with local party campaigners and thanked them for their important work.

The first big tour of the Chairman of the party to the regions, in which he visited 11 cities, is over. New tours to the regions will begin on 6 August, when Rybakov will visit Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, the towns by Lake Baikal and Ulan-Ude.