Press Release, 21.06.2023

Photo: Emilia Slabunova, Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The Yabloko faction submitted to the Legislative Assembly of Karelia a bill on the return of direct mayoral elections in Karelia, including the Mayor of Petrozavodsk. The incumbent Mayor (city manager) of Petrozavodsk, the capital of Karelia, Vladimir Lyubarsky, decided to go to Ukraine as a volunteer fighter of the Akhmat special forces.

“Given the dramatic nature of the situation in Petrozavodsk, which will remain without a mayor starting tomorrow, but with a large number of problems and the unchanged desire of residents to elect the mayor in direct elections, the Yabloko faction again introduced a bill on the return of the mayoral elections”, Emilia Slabunova, head of the Yabloko faction, wrote on her Telegram channel.

Direct elections of the Mayor of Petrozavodsk were canceled in 2015 after the Mayor Galina Shirshina, who became the head of the city with the support of the Yabloko party, was deprived of her powers by pro-government deputies.

The Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of Karelia introduced the initiative to return direct mayoral elections twice, in 2019 and 2021, but each time the bills were rejected by the pro-government majority of the regional parliament.

The new bill will be considered at the profile committee and at the session of the Parliament of Karelia in the first two weeks of July.

EMILIA SLABUNOVA

is member of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party, Chair of Yabloko in 2015-2019.

Deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia.

Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Honoured Teacher of Russia