Press Release, 2.03.2022

Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Unidentified persons broke into the office of the Nizhny Novgorod regional branch of the Yabloko party at Bolshaya Pokrovskaya 7, on 2 March, at about 3:00 p.m. Eight people neutralised the security guard of the building, locked themselves in the office of the party along with two activists who were there, damaged property and took away the sheets with signatures of citizens for peace with Ukraine. The leader of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of Yabloko Oleg Rodin reported on the incident.

The attackers shouted slogans: “Donetsk, Luhansk, we don’t abandon our people!”, “Nazis must be killed!” and “Where were you eight years ago!”. Also they filmed their actions on a video camera. Surveillance cameras at the stairs of the office building recorded the arrival of unexpected “guests”.

The girls in the office called the police, who arrived about an hour later, when the attackers had already left, having previously torn off the posters from the walls, smashed the stander with a placard to sign the petition and tore the Yabloko party flag. The police, according to Rodin, were interested in the activities of the Yabloko party in general, rather than in the circumstances of the incident.

Oleg Rodin noted that 20 minutes before the arrival of the attackers in the office, the owner of the premises called him and said that she had been contacted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and asked to close everyone’s access to the building due to the fact that Yabloko had been collecting signatures against the war with Ukraine there.

“The actions of the pogromists in our office represent the reaction of the authorities to Yabloko’s anti-war campaign, this is the struggle of the party of war against the party of peace! We do not stop our work and tell our supporters standing for peace that you can leave your signatures against the war with Ukraine on the party website,” Oleg Rodin, leader of the Nizhny Novgorod branch of Yabloko, noted.