Prominent liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky, a candidate in numerous Russian elections since the 1991 Soviet collapse, will not run for president in the March 2 vote, his spokeswoman said on Friday.
The decision reflects increasing discouragement among Kremlin opponents with Russia's political system after parliamentary elections this month in which government critics said Russian President Vladimir Putin's United Russia had an unfair advantage and benefited from violations.
Leaders of Yavlinsky's Yabloko party will instead nominate Vladimir Bukovsky, a Soviet-era dissident who has been living in London for years, if he is registered as a candidate by the Central Election Commission, Yavlinsky's spokeswoman Yevgenia Dillendorf said.
Yabloko deputy chairman Sergei Mitrokhin said that if Bukovsky is not registered, the party will likely boycott the election -- meaning it would not support a candidate and presumably reject the result as illegitimate.
But he said the party would support Bukovsky "out of moral considerations" if he is registered, "despite our position of not participating in the elections."
Bukovsky has said he does not expect the authorities to allow him into the race.
Yavlinsky, a liberal economist who was among the leaders of Russia's democratic movement in the early 1990s, ran for president in 1996 and 2000, receiving about 7 percent and 6 percent of the votes.
Yabloko -- once a significant political force -- received 1.6 percent of the vote in the Dec. 2 elections, according to official figures -- far below the 7 percent needed to win seats.
According to the Interfax news agency, Yabloko declared on Friday that it did not recognize the results of the parliamentary vote, in which Putin's United Russia party won 70 percent of the 450 seats in the lower legislative chamber.
"The scope of violations recorded by our observers and observers from other parties cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of the official results and the legitimacy of the parliament itself," said a statement adopted at a meeting of party leaders, as reported by Interfax. "An absolute majority of the violations was committed in favor of one party -- United Russia."
Yabloko's decision came a day after Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion who has become a vocal Putin opponent, said his presidential bid fell apart because supporters were prevented from renting a hall to nominate him -- part of what he said was a Kremlin campaign to stifle opposition.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
RSS