Press Release, 31.07.2019

Yelena Rusakova, unregistered Yabloko candidate to the Moscow City Duma in the electoral district No. 37, submitted an application to the Moscow Mayor’s Office for a rally on 10 August.

Rusakova asks for permission to march from Strastnoy Boulevard to Academician Sakharov Prospect or conduct a rally Sakharov Prspect, or Volkhonka street or Free Russia Square.

She indicated in the application that the estimated number of participants of the action is 10,000 people.

“I am convinced that, despite the need to increase pressure on the authorities, politicians do not have the moral right to urge people to go to the protest actions that have no permission, since it is impossible to guarantee the safety of people,” said Nikolai Rybakov, Deputy Chairman of Yabloko and the party’s election headquarters. “We know too well where this may lead in Russia. The rally of 27 July ended with numerous detentions. It is important to seek fair elections, registration of independent candidates, closure of the criminal case on large-scale disturbances at the past rally and the release of prisoners. I hope the action planned on 10 August will get a permission from the Mayor’s Office. Now, the authorities are only radicalising the protest by their actions.”

It should be noted that Yabloko published “The Eight Demands” that the opposition should demand from the authorities to fulfill. This concerns, in particular, the dissolution of the Moscow City Electoral Commission, early elections of the Mayor and ban on the transfer of the forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the National Guard to Moscow from other Russian regions.

Only three out of eight Yabloko candidates who managed to collected the required number of voters’ signatures in their support were registered in the election. District electoral commissions registered Yevgeny Bunimovich, Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Moscow, Maxim Kruglov, expert of the Yabloko Anti-Corruption Policy Centre, and Daria Besedina, architect. Five other candidates were denied registration: Andrei Babushkin, member of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, Kirill Goncharov, Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper “We Are Muscovites!”, Yelena Rusakova, head of the municipal council in Gagarinsky District of Moscow, Anastasia Bryukhanova, municipal deputy of Shchukino District, and Sergei Mitrokhin, member of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee.

However, yesterday, the Moscow Electoral Commission satisfied Sergei Mitrokhin’s complaint about the refusal to register him as a candidate from Yabloko in electoral district No. 43. Now the district electoral commission has to consider the issue of his registration once again.