Leonid Slutsky’s faction will no longer consist entirely of men

The LDPR and A Just Russia – For Truth have decided on candidates to fill the vacant seats in the State Duma that appeared after the early deprivation of powers of Vasily Vlasov and Vadim Belousov. The “truant workers” will be replaced by women – ex-State Duma deputy Vasilina Kulieva and physician from the Legislative Assembly of the Kirov Region Olesya Redkina. This was reported by party leaders Leonid Slutsky and Sergei Mironov.

The LDPR chairman told reporters that Kuliyeva, a deputy of the lower house of parliament of the sixth and seventh convocations, “showed unique results in the last elections in September.” The Trans-Baikal regional branch of the party, coordinated by Kuliyeva, received four out of 50 mandates in the last elections to the legislative assembly.

In the 2016 elections, Kuliyeva participated in the elections in the Daursky single-mandate constituency. She then gained 44.13% of the votes, beating Yuri Gaiduk (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) and Andrei Popov (A Just Russia).

At those parliamentary elections in 18 single-mandate constituencies, United Russia refused to nominate its candidates (domestic politics was then supervised in the Kremlin by Vyacheslav Volodin, the current speaker of the State Duma), and representatives of the parliamentary opposition eventually won them. Among these districts was Daursky.

In 2021, Yuri Grigoriev from the Right Russia was elected in the district. Kulieva also competed in it, but took only fourth place. At the same time, she was in first place in the group for Transbaikalia, but in the end she failed to be re-elected.

Kuliyeva will become the only woman in the LDPR faction in the current convocation of the State Duma – as was the case in the previous (VII) convocation. In the sixth convocation, in addition to Kuliyeva, Elena Afanasyeva was a member of the LDPR faction (since September 26, 2014 she has been a member of the Federation Council).

Future member of the Right Russia faction in the State Duma Olesya Redkina was second after Vadim Belousov on the federal party list from regional group No. 16 (Udmurt Republic and Kirov Region). Regional branches of the party in these regions supported Redkina, Sergei Mironov told Vedomosti. According to him, “Olesya Alexandrovna is well known in the region, who has worked in healthcare for over 35 years, worked her way up from a nurse to the chief physician of the Kirov Clinical Infectious Diseases Hospital, and was awarded the Order of Pirogov and a medal of the Russian Orthodox Church.”

Now she is a deputy of the Legislative Assembly of the Kirov Region, working on the budget and social issues committees. “Our faction and the Duma as a whole, in the person of Olesya Aleksandrovna Redkina, will receive a very qualified deputy who is deeply immersed in the key problems that concern our fellow citizens,” said the leader of A Just Russia – For Truth.

The State Duma stripped the powers of deputies Vadim Belousov (who is wanted, a criminal case has been opened against him for a particularly large bribe) and Vasily Vlasov for absenteeism on November 1. As Vedomosti reported that day, the chairman of the commission on mandate issues, Otari Arshba, said at a meeting that the State Duma commission on regulations provided information that Belousov had never been in the chamber in almost two years. For Vlasov, who attended almost 100% of the plenary sessions, he did not provide such statistics.

The story of the deprivation of the mandates of deputies for absenteeism emphasizes their administrative dependence and means a slight decrease in the status of a member of the lower house, says Mikhail Vinogradov, president of the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation. In his opinion, there will be fewer people who want to become a deputy in order to gain influence in this regard. “As for career, networking, nothing will change,” he noted.

Political scientist Evgeniy Minchenko called Kuliyeva “a proven party cadre.” “Olesya Redkina is a representative of medicine, and returning a social connotation is just the thing for A Just Russia – For Truth after an unsuccessful collaboration with [бывшим основателем ЧВК «Вагнер» Евгением] Prigozhin (died in a plane crash on August 23. – Vedomosti),” he believes. On January 20, 2023, Mironov published a photo with a sledgehammer that Prigozhin sent him as a gift. Mironov called the attempt at armed rebellion absolutely unacceptable.