Press Release, 25.08.2021

Photo: Anatoly Nogovitsyn, Chairman of the Yakutsk branch of Yabloko / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

“We have not received a court decision from the Ministry of Justice on the involvement of our candidate in an extremist organisation. After considering the issue, we made a decision that the district electoral commission currently does not have sufficient grounds to remove the candidate,” Yevgeny Fyodorov, Chairman of the Central Electoral Commission of Yakutia, said.

Nogovitsyn in his speech at the electoral commission said that he had stopped participating in Navalny’s Headquarters back in 2018 and promised to go on a hunger strike if he was removed from the elections.

Anatoly Nogovitsyn is also running for the State Duma in the Yakutsk single-mandate constituency. The district electoral commission received a message from the Ministry of Justice about Nogovitsyn’s connection with an “extremist organisation”. A meeting of the electoral commission on this issue will be held today, on 25 August. The electoral commission may challenge in court Nogovitsyn’s registration as a candidate in a single-mandate district.

It should be noted that three candidates for the State Duma from Yabloko have been removed from the elections already on charges of their alleged involvement in an “extremist organization”: Lev Shlosberg (Moscow), Viktor Rau (the Altai Territory) and Natalya Rezontova (the Nizhny Novgorod region).

Decisions on involvement in an extremist organisation were also made by courts in relation to two Yabloko candidates for the State Duma from Tatarstan – Ruslan Zinatullin, Chairman of the regional branch of the party, and Yelena Izotova. However, they have not yet been excluded from the list of Yabloko candidates.