Press Release, 29.08.2019

The Moscow Regional Court overturned the decision of the City Court of Sergiev Posad and withdrew Nikita Smirnov and Boris Fadeyev, Yabloko candidates, from the City Council elections. The court also dismissed the appeal of another candidate Igor Bolshakov, who had previously been removed from the election by the city court.

The formal reason for withdrawing Yabloko candidates from the election was the allegedly incorrectly drawn up protocol of the party’s regional conference, which nominated candidates.

It is worth noting that three different plaintiffs, who are competitors of  the Yabloko candidates in their constituencies, were represented by the same lawyer.

In both the first and the appeal instances, the Public Prosecutor’s Office supported the plaintiffs’ claims. The plaintiffs and the Public Prosecutor’s Office referred to the decision of the Reutovsky Court, which canceled registration of Yabloko candidates to the City Council in Reutovo, as a precedent. However, it is not clear how the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the plaintiffs learned about the decision of the Reutovsky Court, because such documents are not published on the Internet.

Sergey Kryzhov, Deputy Chairman of Yabloko in the Moscow Region and current deputy of the City Council of Sergiev Posad, called the claims to the documents of Yabloko candidates “a formal nitpicking”. “A casuistic way was invented so that to remove our candidates from the elections. The electoral commissions did not have complaints about the candidates, as they submitted ideal documents [to the commission], so they decided to find fault with the documents of the [Yabloko] conference,” Kryzhov said.

He also noted that candidates who had every chance of being elected deputies were removed from the election. According to Kryzhov, withdrawing of registration of Yabloko’s candidates is beneficial for the current City Council deputies from the ruling United Russia party – Rita Tikhomirova, Timofei Lagutin and Oleg Gadzhiev.

Kryzhov, who also runs in the elections, suggested that competitors in his constituency did not file a lawsuit against him just because they “cherished their reputation,” while those who filed a lawsuit against Yabloko’s Bolshakov, Fadeyev, and Smirnov were unknown to the public.