Strelkov will become a member of the IT party
Former DPR Defense Minister Igor Strelkov (Girkin) and RT TV presenter Maria Butina, accused of working as a foreign agent in the United States without registration, will become members of the new Direct Democracy Party, the first congress of which will take place today.
Timofey Shevyakov, a member of the party’s organizing committee and co-owner of GR-Consulting Srl (San Marino), told Kommersant about this.
“Igor Strelkov and Maria Butina registered to participate in the founding congress of the party,” Shevyakov said.
According to him, Butina will oversee issues of digital literacy and digital security of the population in the party, and Strelkov’s responsibilities will be determined at the congress.
At the same time, a source in the party claims that Butina will run in 2021 elections to the State Duma from Altai in a single-mandate constituency, while Strelkov’s nomination to the State Duma is still being discussed in the party.
World of Tanks developer Vyacheslav Makarov, who founded the party, told the newspaper that the Direct Democracy Party will also nominate its candidates for elections to the legislative assemblies of Novosibirsk and Voronezh.
“Novosibirsk and Voronezh are key regions for us in which we will go to elections to the legislative assembly. These are two regions in which there is a fairly large concentration of IT companies, that is, people who can not only understand and accept, but also transmit the ideas of direct democracy. In addition, we have strong regional branches in these regions,” Makarov said.
As a reminder, in July 2018, Maria Butina was arrested in the United States on charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent. She later pleaded guilty and stated in court that she acted under the direction of a Russian official. On April 6, 2019, she was sentenced in the United States to eighteen months in prison. She returned to Russia on October 26, 2019, after serving part of her sentence and being deported.
In 2014, Igor Strelkov led the DPR Ministry of Defense and the militia that defended Slavyansk. He now sharply criticizes Russian policy in both Ukraine and Syria. Earlier, reports surfaced that Strelkov was planning to run for the Sevastopol Legislative Assembly as a member of the "Party of Action," a claim he denied.
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