Press release, 10.12.2015

Mayor of Petrozavodsk, the Republic of Karelia, will turn to the court if the deputies of the City Council dismiss her.

Today the City Councul deputies handed Galina Shirshina a letter of removal from office with the signatures of 22 deputies. The case will be considered at the session on December 25.

Galina Shirshina told ITAR-TASS news agency that such an initiative of the deputies was predictable.

“The Mayor’s Office is also preparing their stance on the situation. It will be announced at the session of the City Council and that the court will take place where I will be able to prove my point”, she said. Mayor of Petrozavodsk stressed that she is not doing to resign on her own accord and had already informed governor of Karelia Alexander Khudilaynen about it.

Shirshina disagrees with the deputies who claim that she didn’t perform her duties within over three months.

“The deputies have no other way out. The decisions made by the Mayor’s office are not of interest to the business represented in the City Council, they are of interest to the citizens”, she explained.

Galina Shirshina was elected in 2013 with support from the Karelian branch of YABLOKO. She won with 41.9 per cent of the vote, her competitor then Mayor of Petrozavodsk Nikolai Levin from the ruling United Russia party received 28.9 per cent of the vote. Her term expires in 2018.

Shirshina demonstrated good results on the post, however, had to confront resistance to her anti-corruption action. Consequently, the pro-Governor’s majority of deputies in the Petrozavodsk City Council labelled her work as “unsatisfactory” in 2014. Her team had to face reprisals: criminal cases were filed against her colleagues, members of YABLOKO. On 2 November, Petrozavodsk City Court of the Republic of Karelia sentenced Eugenia Sukhorukova, Deputy Mayor, to three years of imprisonment with a probation period of one year. YABLOKO considers this sentence a revenge of Governor Khudilainen to Shirshina and her team for their consistent anti-corruption and socially oriented policies in the republic.