Nikolai Lyaskin said that he has been forced to withdraw from the election race. The same was announced today by Vladimir Milov, Vladislav Naganov, Maxim Motin, and Andrei Bystrov.
I think that by the end of the day we will hear several more similar announcements.
And of course, the Moscow City Election Commission will tell us how candidates from "Civic Platform" and the United Russia primary winners successfully collected signatures, even though no one seems to have seen their signature gatherers anywhere.
All the wonderful people like these will be registered:
The barrier set for independent candidates to take part in the election is clearly prohibitive. They are required to collect 5,000 to 6,000 signatures—more than the number of votes received by the United Russia winners of the "primaries", whom the mayor's office has declared highly successful.
Under criminal prosecution, as in Lyaskin's case, collecting signatures is simply impossible. I should note that Sobyanin's City Hall, together with the crooks from the Investigative Committee, is openly mocking Lyaskin: he was summoned for questioning today, on the very day the signatures had to be notarized, when every candidate spends 15 to 20 hours signing signature sheets and then hours more with a notary, depriving him of any chance to complete everything properly and legally. And today, an hour after Lyaskin said he was forced to drop out of the race, an investigator called him and postponed this "very important" interrogation.
There is nothing more to say about Jankauskas.
As of today, only Gaidar, Kats, Romanova, and Sobol have said they collected a sufficient number of signatures. Let us hope that this list grows, and that everyone who submits signatures will be registered.
I will write a longer post soon about my attitude toward all of this.
For now, all we can do is thank the hundreds of volunteers who worked selflessly alongside the candidates withdrawing today. You took on an almost impossible task, hoping for the best. Today is not your best day, but I am sure this work will not have been in vain.