Press Release, 22.09.2021

Photo: Olga Pokrovskaya and Yelena Mayatnikova

Members of the St. Petersburg and the Pskov electoral commissions with a decisive vote from Yabloko voted against the approval of the results of elections to regional parliaments and filed dissenting opinions.

Yelena Mayatnikova, a member of the Electoral Commission of the Pskov Region, in her dissenting opinion, wrote in favour of the cancellation of the election results to the Pskov Regional Assembly of Deputies due to the unlawful extrajudicial exclusion of Lev Shlosberg and Nikolai Kuzmin from the Pskov list of candidates of the Pskov Yabloko, as well as mass voting of voters who do not have registration on the territory of these precincts at many polling stations on September 17-18.

Olga Pokrovskaya, a member of the Electoral Commission of St. Petersburg, announced that the results of elections of deputies to the Legislative Assembly determined by the electoral commission were unreliable due to an unprecedented number of violations.

According to Pokrovskaya, everywhere observers and members of electoral commissions were obstructed in the exercise of their legal rights to control the voting process and summarise its results. Mass voting outside polling stations was carried out with gross violations.

In a number of districts of St. Petersburg, members of electoral commissions who insisted on the observance of their rights and called for the suppression of violations were, before the counting of votes, massively removed from the polling stations and the premises of territorial election commissions. Often this was done with the use of force, as well as with the help of unlawful police actions.

In addition, the safety of the ballots was not ensured during the three-day voting period. In the protocols on the voting results, there emerged numerical indicators that did not correspond to reality, Pokrovskaya stated.

Despite large-scale violations both in St. Petersburg and in the Pskov region, Yabloko managed to retain factions in the parliaments of these regions. According to official data, Yabloko’s list in St. Petersburg received 9.17% of the vote. The party’s deputies will be the leaders of the party candidates list – Boris Vishnevsky and Alexander Shishlov. Yabloko’s list in the elections to the Pskov Regional Assembly of Deputies received, according to official data, 6.22% of the vote. Arthur Gaiduk, leader of the list, was elected deputy.

In addition, two deputies were elected to the Legislative Assembly of Karelia (Emilia Slabunova and Inna Boluchevskaya), the list received 8.54% of the votes. Vladimir Ryzhkov won the by-election to the Moscow City Duma. He will become the fifth Yabloko deputy in the Moscow city parliament.