The unregistered opposition party The Other Russia will field its own candidate for mayor of the Moscow satellite city of Khimki, party leader Eduard Limonov said on Monday.
The Other Russia decided not to team up with other opposition forces, who have nominated outspoken environmental activist Yevgenia Chirikova as a consensus candidate, and put forward Sergei Medvedev, a former political prisoner.
Medvedev was convicted in 2006 for taking part in a clash between a group of National Bolshevik Party members and pro-Kremlin youth movement activists and sentenced to two and a half years in prison. The European Court of Human Rights subsequently ordered Russia to pay him a compensation for illegal detention.
“If he wins the election, Medvedev will promote a climate of genuine democracy in the city. Citywide referendums will be held on all important issues and decisions will be made in accordance with the will of the people,” Limonov said.
All other mayoral candidates are “representatives of the bourgeois class,” he added.
The elections were called after former mayor Vladimir Strelchenko quit his post on August 14.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation will also field its own candidate: Leonid Vinogradov, a former deputy mayor of Khimki.
The ruling United Russia party’s candidate will be acting mayor Oleg Shakhov.
Chirikova, 35, played a leading role in the organization of the unprecedented protests against President Vladimir Putin that broke out late last year and her candidacy comes as the opposition seeks to promote a united front at regional elections. She has been Russia’s most high-profile environmental activist since she spearheaded a campaign to save Khimki forestland that stood in the path of a planned Moscow-St. Petersburg highway.
The construction of the $8-billion highway was suspended by order of then President Dmitry Medvedev in August 2010, but has since resumed.
The elections are expected to take place on October 14, in a day of nationwide voting for regional authorities that have been targeted by the anti-Putin opposition as a crucial stage in their bid to dislodge the former KGB officer from power.
Khimki, with a population of some 200,000, was built up by Soviet authorities after World War Two as an aerospace defense development center.
