Press Release, 23.09.2021

Photo: Lev Shlosberg and Artur Gaiduk / Photo by the Press Service of the Pskov branch of Yabloko

Artur Gaiduk, an ambulance doctor and acting deputy of the regional Legislative Assembly, was elected a deputy from Yabloko to the regional parliament on the basis of a single party list. Lev Schlosberg, Chairman of the regional branch of Yabloko in the Pskov region who was removed from elections, will become his public assistant. Another Yabloko candidate, Vsevolod Kozlovsky, according to official data, came second in single-mandate constituency No. 5 (Velikiye Luki). This result will be challenged in court.

The Pskov Yabloko team included 42 people. Both current deputies and party members, and new people participated in the elections (17 candidates participated in the elections for the first time).

According to official data, 13,943 voters of the Pskov region (6.2 % of those who voted) voted for the Pskov Yabloko list of candidates to the regional parliament. Artur Gaiduk was elected a deputy of the Pskov Regional Assembly from Yabloko.

It should be noted that in September 2020, the deputies of the Pskov Regional Assembly adopted a bill on the reduction of the deputy corps of the Regional Assembly from 44 to 26 people.

Lev Shlosberg announced that he would become Gaiduk’s assistant on a voluntary basis. “I am not leaving the Regional Assembly. The Yabloko faction continues to work,” Shlosberg said.

As for the State Duma elections in the Pskov region, according to official data, 11,015 (4.76%) voters voted for the federal list of party candidates to the State Duma in the region, and 20,534 (9.02%) voted for Artur Gaiduk as a candidate to the State Duma from the Pskov region.

On 21 September, a meeting of the Electoral Commission of the Pskov Region drawing up the results of the elections to the Assembly of the Pskov Region took place. Yelena Mayatnikova, a member of the electoral commission with a decisive vote from Yabloko, voted against approving the results of elections to the Regional Assembly and presented a dissenting opinion to the decisions of the Regional Electoral Commission.

Mayatnikova considers it necessary to cancel the election results due to the unawlful extrajudicial exclusion of Lev Shlosberg and Nikolai Kuzmin from the single list of candidates of the Pskov Yabloko, as well as mass voting at many polling stations of voters who did not have registration in these precincts (such voting took place on September 17 and 18).

The Pskov Yabloko also does not recognise the results of elections to the Regional Assembly as legitimate in single-mandate constituency No. 5 (Velikiye Luki), where Yabloko’s candidate Vsevolod Kozlovsky, according to official information, became the second (3,804 votes, 24.71%), losing 224 votes to the protégé of United Russia. According to members of electoral commissions with an advisory vote from Vsevolod Kozlovsky, this happened as a result of manipulations with ballots in security bags at several polling stations. The results of these elections will be challenged in court so that to return to Vsevolod Kozlovsky the mandate he honestly won.

Lev Shlosberg thanked the voters, friends and donors of the Pskov Yabloko for their help and support during the most difficult election campaign in the history of the faction. “The authorities of the Pskov region planned to destroy the Pskov Yabloko as an independent opposition political force during these elections. The authorities’ propagandists wrote and spoke about this openly. They were absolutely sure that everything should work out for them and it would happen. A campaign of harassment and discrediting was launched against the team of Pskov Yabloko, our legitimate campaigning was hampered by all means, electoral commissions were absolutely indifferent to violations of the law against our team.

During the three-day voting, the methods that were the greatest is scale in the history of regional elections were used to force voters and create unprecedented conditions for falsifying the voting results. Despite all this, voters were able to keep the Pskov Yabloko in the regional parliament. This is your exceptional merit, dear residents of the Pskov region,” Lev Shlosberg said.