Press Release, 6.11.2020

The City Court of St. Petersburg confirmed the invalidity of the elections held by Electoral Commission No 1,280 in the Moskovskaya Zastava municipal district. Representatives of pro-government’s United Russia, the LDPR party and one self-nominated candidate will be replaced by deputies from Yabloko and another independent self-nominated candidate.

Now representatives of the Yabloko party Anna Kuznetsova and Yekaterina Zharkova, as well as self-nominated candidate Alexander Budberg, will take the seats in the municipal council that were taken by United Russia and the LDPR party. The city court gave the electoral commission of the municipality a month to transfer powers to new deputies.

“I am very grateful to our huge team of lawyers and my co-lawyer Alexander Budberg. Together we put in all our strength and squeezed out the maximum, which led us wto this difficult victory. I hope that we will remain the same team in the municipal council!” Anna Kuznetsova, deputy of the Moskovskaya Zastava  district, said.

“A year later, we received our well-deserved mandates, even though by that moment the belief in “the most humane court in the world” had been reduced to almost zero. Either the escape of the Chairman of Electoral Commission No 1,280 with ballots was too odious, or we were lucky with competent judges – remains a mystery to me. But this event is definitely positive both for the residents of the Moskovskaya Zastava  district and for all of us!” Yekaterina Zharkova emphasized.

The deputies who received the mandates announced their intention to apply to court so that those involved in the election fraud in the district are brought to criminal liability.

The St.Petersburg branch of Yabloko congratulates Yekaterina, Anna and Alexander on receiving their mandates, and residents of the district. The regional branch of the party expresses its gratitude to the excellent team of lawyers and especially to Marina Topornikova for her greatc work and professionalism.

It should be noted that earlier the Vasileostrovskiy District Court partially satisfied the claim of  Ivan Starikov, Yabloko candidate for the deputies in electoral district No. 7. The stolen mandate was returned to him. In addition, the court satisfied the claims of the candidates from Yabloko to cancel the results of the recount of votes in electoral district No. 22.

It should be noted that according to the results of the St. Petersburg municipal campaign, 99 candidates were elected as municipal deputies from Yabloko.

The party received a majority in two districts – Liteiny and Vladimirsky, as well as the largest factions in the Smolninskoye and Malaya Okhta municipalities. In addition, the Yabloko team received 13 seats out of 20 in the Murino municipal district (50,000 residents), which is located on the border of the Leningrad Region and St. Petersburg.

The St. Petersburg municipal elections were held with numerous violations and were accompanied by scandals: unlawful prohibition and removal of candidates from the elections, lawsuits and open fraud – 24 seats from deputies were stolen after the election day with the use of the technology of “recounting” of votes.

Yabloko lawyers filed lawsuits in courts to challenge the outcome of municipal elections at the polling stations where the results of voting were rigged.