Press Release, 12.08.2019

Regional branches of the Yabloko party took part in the All-Russian Campaign for Fair Elections and Against Arbitrariness of the Authorities held on 10 August. Party members attended rallies and pickets in Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa, Irkutsk and other cities.

On 10 August, an action took place in In Nizhny Novgorod as part of the All-Russian Campaign for Fair Elections and Against Arbitrariness of the Authorities. About 500 Nizhny Novgorod residents came to the action and expressed their solidarity with Muscovites fighting for their rights to elect and be elected, and demanded the release of the detained participants of the Moscow protests of 27 July and 3 August.

Photo: Oleg Rodin and Alexei Sadomovsky.

Oleg Rodin, Chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod Yabloko, Alexei Sadomovsky, Deputy Chairman of the regional branch of the party, as well as Yevgeny Dolgopolov, Yabloko registered candidate for elections to the Nizhny Novgorod City Duma, and Andrey Yegreshi, party member from the city of Gorodets, spoke at the mass picket. Before the action the interior put pressure on the activists, police came to Oleg Rodin’s and Alexei Sadomovsky’s homes to hand them warnings on the eve of the mass picket, and also visited Yabloko’s office in Nizhny Novgorod.

In Irkutsk activists participating in a mass picket demanded the following: registration of independent candidates for the Moscow City Duma elections and release of political prisoners detained during peaceful rallies in Moscow. About 100 people took part in the action, including members of the Yabloko party led by Grigory Gribenko, Chairman of the regional branch.

Photo: Picketing in Irkutsk

The Bashkir regional branch of Yabloko conducted a series of one-person pickets in Ufa on 10 August. The pickets were held under the slogan “For Fair Elections” in solidarity with participants in mass protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg and against gross violations of constitutional rights of citizens, as well as refusals to register candidates in Bashkiria. The picketers also protested against the repressive reactions of the authorities to peaceful demonstrations.

Photo: Picketing in Ufa, Bashkiria

In Moscow, municipal deputies from Yabloko Yelena Rusakova, Yelena Filina, and Andrei Morev became co-organisers of a mass rally for fair elections, which was held in Sakharov Prospect in Moscow on 10 August. The action became the largest since the protests of 2011-2012. According to the White Counter orgnisation, about 60,000 people took part in the rally. Yabloko leaders Grigory Yavlinsky and Emilia Slabunova also participated in the rally.