Donbass assembled a part-house – Newspaper Kommersant No. 240 (7441) dated 12/26/2022

A Just Russia – For Truth (SRZP), the last of the parliamentary parties, created its branches in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics last week. At the beginning of 2023, the issue of creating cells in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions will be submitted to the presidium of the SRHR. The delay in the party, which was one of the first to start working in the Donbass, is explained by a careful attitude to the selection of personnel. Other oppositionists also try to rely on local activists, although they admit that residents of new territories join United Russia more often.

Presidium SRHR On December 21, he voted for the creation of regional branches in the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR). State Duma deputy Elena Drapeko was recommended for the post of chairman of the branch in the DPR, and Gennady Tarakanov, a party member and head of the Republican Center for the Protection of Citizens’ Rights, was recommended in the LPR. At the beginning of 2023, the presidium will consider the issue of creating regional branches in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions.

Recognition of the independence of Donbass was one of the points of the election program of the SRZP in the elections to the State Duma in 2021. The party has been working with these territories for a long time, and a year and a half ago it opened a Center for the Protection of Citizens’ Rights in the DPR. At the beginning of June 2022, a similar structure appeared in the LPR. In Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, in the first months of the special operation, the headquarters of Zakhar Prilepin, co-chairman of the SRHR, began to work. Nevertheless, the Social Revolutionaries turned out to be the last of the parliamentary parties to officially open their branches in the annexed subjects.

“We are not in a hurry, we are not fighting for some temporary indicators. We select candidates very carefully,” party leader Sergei Mironov explained to Kommersant. According to him, in the DPR and LPR there are already several hundred full-fledged members of the SRZP. And Senator Sergei Bezdenezhnykh, who oversees the new regions in the party, added that there are much more supporters of the SRHR who do not yet have party cards: there are more than 3,500 of them in the LPR, about 1,500 in the DPR, about 2,000 in the Zaporozhye region, and about 3 in the Kherson region. “Since the headquarters of Zakhar Prilepin began to work in the first months of the NWO in new territories, at the moment it was possible to form an already significant local asset, as well as deploy a wide volunteer network,” the senator noted. “Many of the supporters have already filled out application forms for entry in SRZP. In the LPR and DPR, the process of filing applications is more active, since the issuance of Russian passports was launched there much earlier. And in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, the process is slower, as many are still waiting to receive Russian passports.”

Recall that on October 19, President Vladimir Putin introduced martial law in all four new subjects of the Russian Federation. This called into question the holding of legislative elections scheduled for September 10, 2023 in all these regions, since, according to the law, elections are not held in the territories where martial law has been introduced. Nevertheless, Russian parties began to actively create their structures there.

They did it first United Russia: On October 6, the party’s general council decided to establish regional branches in all four new regions. Acting head of the DPR Denis Pushilin (Donetsk regional branch), chairman of the People’s Council of the LPR Denis Miroshnichenko (Lugansk), head of the military-civil administration of Melitopol Galina Danilchenko (Zaporizhia) and deputy chairman of the UR faction in State Duma, coordinator of the humanitarian mission of the party in the region Igor Kastyukevich (Kherson). Mr. Turchak said that more than 22 thousand people have already joined the ranks of the United Russia in the LPR, and 43 thousand people have applied for membership in the DPR.

LDPR On November 11, she held a founding conference of her Donetsk branch in the Rostov region, citing the fact that Donetsk party members were trained there. The conference was attended by 72 members of the Liberal Democratic Party from the DPR, the branch coordinator was Andrey Kramar, a native of the Smolensk region and a longtime ally of the head of the republic, Denis Pushilin. And on December 17, the Liberal Democratic Party opened a branch in the LPR. About 200 people attended its meeting, including LDPR leader Leonid Slutsky, State Duma deputies Yaroslav Nilov and Alexei Didenko, and a new member of the party, businessman Viktor Bout, who returned to Russia from an American prison. Maksim Uvarov, deputy of the People’s Council of the LPR, was elected coordinator of the Luhansk branch. Alexei Didenko, deputy head of the central office of the Liberal Democratic Party, told Kommersant that there are “surprisingly many trained personnel” in the new regions. At the same time, he acknowledged that many residents of the new territories go to United Russia, partly because they are attracted by the name: “Everyone was for a single Russian state, that is, for a single Russia, but the opposition did not develop on a full scale.” But, as the deputy hopes, “over time, people will be convinced that among the opposition there are worthy candidates who are able to implement large-scale projects in new subjects.”

On November 19, they established their regional branch in the DPR “New people”Voronezh activist Sergey Gurchenko became its secretary. A branch in the LPR is “on the way,” an informed source in the party explained to Kommersant. “There is no shortage of local personnel, but in order to maintain control for the first time, half of the council of the regional branch is formed from activists (from the “old” regions of the Russian Federation. —”b”), who are ready to work in new territories, then we rotate them with local ones,” says the interlocutor. “Gurchenko has long been engaged in various party activities in the DPR. And the rest of the locals: we sent a “humanitarian aid” there, overgrown with understandable partners.”

CPRF established its cell in the LPR on December 3, its first secretary was the leader of the movement “Union of Communists of Luhansk” Igor Gumenyuk. The next day, a regional branch in the DPR was created, headed by the leader of the unregistered Communist Party of the DPR, Boris Litvinov. And on December 5, the Communists established regional committees in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions: they were headed respectively by Oleg Slyusarenko, ex-deputy of the Supreme Council of Crimea of ​​the fifth convocation (2006-2010) from the Party of Regions, and senator Airat Gibatdinov.

“It’s even easier for us to form an asset than the same United Russia, because they have to resolve this issue administratively, and people come to us for ideological reasons,” said Alexander Yushchenko, head of the press service of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, State Duma deputy. He said that the Communists mainly form an asset of local representatives, and Senator Gibatdinov “has some experience in leading the Ulyanovsk organization.” Mr. Yushchenko also noted that in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions earlier “there was an almost underground existence of an asset, and it needs some time to integrate into our reality.”

Ksenia Veretennikova, Andrey Vinokurov