Press Release, 7.06.2023

Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

25 years ago, Larisa Yudina, Co-Chair of the Yabloko branch in Kalmykia, was murdered. Her whole life was connected with journalism. In 1991, Yudina headed the newspaper Sovietskaya Kalmykia. The paper was well-known for fight against corruption and criticism of the President of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who, during the election campaign in 1993, announced that he would manage Kalmykia as a corporation.

After Ilyumzhinov’s victory in the elections, the newspaper Sovetskaya Kalmykia was no longer printed in the Republic. The team of the paper was forced to use the services of a printing house in another region – the city of Volzhsky, the Volgograd Region. Since 1995, Yabloko provided assistance in publishing the newspaper. In 1998, Larisa Yudina became one of the co-founders of the Yabloko branch in Kalmykia.

In 1997, Larisa’s newspaper wrote a lot about the confrontation between the Federal Security Service of Kalmykia and President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. It began after the presidential plane was detained in connection with an undeclared cargo of black caviar.

On 7 June, 1998, Larisa Yudina was kidnapped. She was lured out of her house under the pretext of giving her important documents about fraud with budget money and then she was taken away. Soon her body with multiple stab wounds and a broken head was found in a pond on the outskirts of Elista, the capital of Kalmykia. Two people were found guilty of the murder, one of them was Ilyumzhinov’s assistant in 1993-1994.

At the time of the murder, Larisa Yudina was 52. In 2000, she was posthumously awarded the Order of Courage – “for courage and dedication shown in the performance of professional duty”.

Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov notes that Larisa Yudina was the first in Yabloko to give her life for her beliefs, values, political and civic work.

“And we will always remember the Larisa Yudina, Yuri Shchekochikhin, Farid Babayev, Timur Kuashev and other our comrades [who were killed], about the price they paid to make life in our country more honest and more free.”

Rybakov emphasises that Yabloko will continue this work.