Press Release, 5.08.2019

Yabloko activists from the Krasnoyarsk branch of the party took part in the rally for resignation of  Alexander Uss, Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The discontent of more than two thousand people who came out to rally in Krasnoyarsk was caused by the lack of actions by the authorities in the situation of large-scale forest fires in Siberia, poor air quality in Krasnoyarsk, the recent flood in Kansk and the problems of people decieted when buying apartments.

Almost every speech was accompanied by chanting of the rally participants: “Uss to resignation!”. The same slogan was used in the design of the scene and in the final version of the rally resolution. It was proposed that everyone should sign up under the resolution, consequently the process of signing up took several hours, more than 1,500 people signed up under the demand for the resignation of the Krasnoyarsk Governor.

The placards of the rally participants often quoted the Governor’s words that the extinguishing of forest fires was “economically inexpedient”, “pointless and even harmful” and “it never occurred to anyone to drown icebergs so that it would be warmer here”.

“All of the Governor’s recent statements indicate that he has got out of touch with reality and seems to be more worried about his elite real estate in Moscow and the Moscow Region than about the preservation of our Siberian nature,” said Lyudmila Zakhartsova, host of the yesterday’s rally and Deputy Chair of the Krasnoyarsk branch of Yabloko . “If at first many vested hope in a native of our region, that he would protect our land and take care of its inhabitants, now these illusions have vanished with the smoke of the burnt Krasnoyarsk taiga.”

“The recent weeks, when the whole of Siberia was clouded with smoke from the Krasnoyarsk forest fires, the negligence and inaction of our regional authorities demonstrated so vividly that even Moscow could not stand it, sending the best investigators here and literally forcing the regional authorities to introduce an emergency regime,” Oksana Demchenko, head of the Krasnoyarsk branch of Yabloko, emphasied.

It should be noted that over 100 forest fires were registered in the Krasnoyarsk Territory on a total area of ​​about 1.097 million hectares. A criminal case has been opened on the negligence of officials of the Ministry of Forestry of the region. Earlier, the Krasnoyarsk branch of Yabloko called on the regional authorities to declare a “black sky” regime in the region in connection with the continued smokiness of the territories from forest fires raging in the Lower Angara and Evenkiya.