Russia’s first post-election protest over alleged fraud in the State Duma vote goes ahead in the northern city of Syktyvkar. About 100 people showed up.
A protest against alleged fraud in the State Duma election took place in Michurinsky Park in central Syktyvkar, the news outlet 7×7 reported. The Communist Party’s regional branch organized the rally.
Oleg Mikhailov, a Communist Party lawmaker who represented the Komi Republic in the previous State Duma, posted a short video from the rally. He ran for the State Duma in a single-member district this year but lost to a United Russia candidate. The Communist Party’s VKontakte account also livestreamed the rally.
About 100 people attended, according to 7×7’s count.
In a September 23 announcement, Vyacheslav Kochev, the Communist Party’s State Duma candidate who filed the application to hold the protest, said organizers decided to hold the rally “because we received a flood of reports of fraud and violations at polling stations during the election and the two days that followed.”
According to 7×7, it was the first protest against election fraud to go ahead. Applications for similar protests had also been filed in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Perm, Izhevsk, Kazan, Ulan-Ude, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Krasnodar, and Lipetsk. St. Petersburg authorities had already rejected the organizers’ application, citing COVID-19.
Russia’s Central Election Commission announced the election results on September 25, saying United Russia had won 349 of the State Duma’s 450 seats. The Communist Party came second with 37 seats, followed by the Liberal Democratic Party with 23, New People with 19, A Just Russia with 17, and Rodina with one. Some vote tally records had still not been published when the results were announced.
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