On March 26, 2003, unknown malefactors sent out spam e-mails allegedly from deputy of the State Duma Sergei Mitrokhin (the YABLOKO faction). A letter with a return address Mitrokhin@yabloko.ru was sent to a list of addressees. We don’t know the addresses on this list The letter contained "cooperation proposals" and a reference to the personal web-site of Sergei Mitrokhin.

For three days the YABLOKO party received a storm of angry telephone calls and letters from Internet users and the reputation of the YABLOKO party and Sergei Mitrokhin was damaged. Some users obtained 400 letters of the same content in their e-mail boxes. In the same period Mitrokhin@yabloko.ru received about 25,000 answers.

Our analysis showed that several web servers located abroad were used for this spam e-mailing. Although this makes the investigation more difficult, YABLOKO's specialists continue their research.

"The hooligans did not achieve the result they were seeking – to discredit the YABLOKO party - it is obvious to everyone that this is "garbage" mailing," said Director and Administrator of the Yabloko.ru server Vyacheslav Erokhin.

Earlier an attack was undertaken against another parliamentary party - United Russia. We can forecast that similar actions aimed at discrediting candidate in the eyes of his voters will be used during the election campaign.

The YABLOKO party considers such methods of political combat unbecoming and states that it has never used and will not use such impersonal mailing as a propaganda instrument.

Consequently Mitrokhin is going to file an official inquiry with the Federal Security Service of Russia.

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