Press release, 15.10.2018

On 12 October, Yabloko activists delivered reports on the work carried out by Yabloko municipal deputy Irina Kopkina in Moscow’s Strogino District over the course of a year. Later that evening local residents posted on social media that representatives of Zhilishchnilk, a state funded institution responsible for housing and utilities services, were supposedly taking away the reports from mail boxes. Some local residents were outraged by this action – they called Irina Kopkina and told her about what had happened.

A CCTV camera captures the incident at Ulitsa Isakovskogo d.12, k.1. Irina Kopkina had a meeting with the residents of the apartment building. It turned out that Zafar, an employee of Zhilishchnik, gathered all the reports from mail boxes and placed them in a box. Irina Kopkina asked the residents to keep the CCTV recording so that she could present it to the law enforcement. The municipal deputy is planning to file a report to police and the prosecutor’s office.

“I consider this action as obstruction of my work as a municipal deputy,” Irina Kopkina said explaining that she was prevented from fulfilling her commitment to report on her work to the local resident once a year.

Irina Kopkina was elected to the Strogino District municipal council in September 2017. She is Yabloko’s only representative in the local council. On the night of 4 to 5 October, unidentified persons punctured the tires in the car of Irina Kopkina’s son. This has become the second attack on the car of the family of the deputy for the past few months. Kopkina associates the incident with her activities as a municipal deputy.