Press Release, 09.09.2024

In this election campaign, Yabloko nominated 301 candidates in 69 election campaigns in 19 regions of Russia, who were ready to conduct an election campaign with the key political demand – the immediate conclusion of a ceasefire agreement and the release of all political prisoners.

139 candidates conducted mandatory collection of signatures in favour of their registration in 13 regions (the Trans-Baikal Territory, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Vologda region, the Irkutsk region, the Kaliningrad region, the Kurgan region, the Moscow region, the Murmansk region, the Rostov region, the Sakhalin region, the Tula region, the Chelyabinsk region, and Moscow). In total, more than 60,000 citizens of Russia expressed support for the candidates from Yabloko who were campaigning under a single slogan “For Peace and Freedom! For the Ceasefire Agreement!”.

59 candidates in 29 election campaigns in eight Russian regions were admitted to the elections. The party also supported two candidates who publicly advocated for a ceasefire agreement and shared our principles and values: Sergei Uglyanitsa in the municipal elections in the Irkutsk region and Alexander Dudchenko in Voronezh, who submitted documents for the mayoral election.

At the moment, it is reported that deputy mandates were won by Yabloko candidates lawyer Anatoly Kivva (Zaboryevskoye rural settlement of the Ryazan region) and teacher of Russian language and literature Yelena Tulina (Trubichinskoye rural settlement of the Novgorod region).

Chairman of the Yabloko party Nikolai Rybakov, speaking at a briefing after the end of voting on the evening of 8 September, said that the candidates for peace and freedom held hundreds of meetings, visited thousands of apartments and houses, collected voters’ contacts, distributed hundreds of thousands of leaflets, newspapers and other printed materials.

“Each of these people risked their freedom in order to convey our position to voters. I am very grateful to these people for their courage, for their honesty and their bravery,” Rybakov addressed the Yabloko candidates.

Speaking about the role of elections in Russia now, Nikolai Rybakov noted that they were not an instrument for development of policies and formation of government bodies. “This is an opportunity for people to speak out relatively safely about our position on the main issue now. On the issue that there is nothing more important than preservation of human lives. There is nothing more important than reaching an agreement on a ceasefire, so that the people of Russia and Ukraine stop killing each other. For this, three hundred Russians went to these elections. I want to thank each of them,” Rybakov noted.

Kirill Goncharov, Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Yabloko and candidate for deputy of the Moscow City Duma, spoke about the participation of the Moscow branch of the party in the elections of two levels – the Moscow parliament and the Municipal Council of the Kurkino District in Moscow. Candidates for the Moscow City Duma faced obstruction from the authorities, who intimidated their supporters and voters: Yabloko had a single political agenda, which it could be dangerous to support publicly. The support of dozens of thousands of voters who openly put their signatures in support of candidates for peace and freedom was all the more valuable.

Maxim Kruglov, who collected a sufficient number of signatures to participate in the elections to the Moscow City Duma, and six Yabloko candidates registered for the municipal elections in the Kurkino district in Moscow were withdrawn from elections for political reasons.

“Professional forces, connected, in our opinion, with the executive authority of Moscow, were involved in the withdrawal of all our candidates,” Kirill Goncharov stressed.

Kirill Goncharov also announced another charity auction in support of political prisoners, which would be held in Yabloko in September.

Adviser to the party chairman Grigory Grishin, who ran for the Moscow City Duma in the Central District of Moscow, spoke about the key slogan of Yabloko in these elections – the demand for an immediate ceasefire agreement between Russia and Ukraine.

Grishin said that the demand for normalisation of Russia’s relations with the outside world and for normalisation of life within Russia had been felt badly in Russian society, but the authorities forbade its expression. That is why Yabloko met such support when it took upon the courage to voice these demands.

“Such strong administrative counteraction to Yabloko in these elections is also a result of the fact that the party’s key demand enjoys enormous support among the people,” Grishin noted. “The authorities are afraid to give [to people] the opportunity to openly and loudly say what people really think about the so-called “special military operation”.”