This is Denis Mikhailov. He is the coordinator of our headquarters in St. Petersburg. He is only 22 years old.
Denis is an ordinary young man, a lawyer by training. He opposes corruption and is sick of the authorities’ endless lies. That is why he went to work at our headquarters.
Is Denis useful to our country? Of course he is. Even if you disagree with his political views, we need people who actively speak out against corruption.
But the St. Petersburg authorities see Mikhailov as a real enemy. St. Petersburg Governor Poltavchenko and Vice Governor Albin are so enraged by his work that Denis, having just been released after 30 days in detention, was immediately jailed again—this time for 25 days. Denis had his appeal hearing today, and the sentence was left unchanged. First he served time for “organizing” the January 28 voters’ strike (a boycott campaign), and now he is being held for “taking part” in it. In the entire course of our campaign, over more than a year, this is an unprecedented case.
Why did this happen? Was it Denis, rather than Poltavchenko and Albin, who siphoned off billions during the stadium’s construction? Was it Denis, rather than Poltavchenko and Albin, who ran the entire city into the ground? After all, whose son was it—Denis’s or Poltavchenko’s—who recently became a billionaire?
Dear residents of St. Petersburg, I am sure that regardless of your political views, you cannot consider Denis Mikhailov so dangerous to the city that he should be dragged straight from one detention term into another. We all understand perfectly well that Mikhailov is being kept behind bars because your city has a long tradition of large-scale election fraud, and Denis, as the coordinator of our St. Petersburg headquarters, is now leading the fight against it.
I think it is important to prove that we can do it even without the coordinator. We must not let the crook Poltavchenko stuff tens of thousands of ballots again to inflate turnout in these “elections.” Stop him: sign up right now and become an election observer in St. Petersburg.