Moscow’s Communists leave city parliament meeting in protest as party continues crusade against elections it believes were stolen

The first sitting of Moscow’s city parliament since this month’s elections was interrupted on Wednesday when the chamber’s Communist Party faction simultaneously left in protest over the alleged rigging of electronic votes.

The session, held remotely, took an unusual turn when all Communists staged a walkout from the online meeting.

“The Communist Party faction in the Moscow City Duma… does not recognize the results of the elections in the city of Moscow in single-mandate districts to the State Duma,” said Nikolai Zubrilin, the head of the group in the Moscow parliament. “We do not recognize the results of electronic voting… In protest, we are leaving the meeting.”

The Communist MPs then departed.

From September 17-19, Russians went to the polls to choose from 14 parties and other independent candidates vying for 450 seats in the country’s national parliament. On September 20, after the results were revealed, the Communist Party declared that it would refuse to recognize the votes of electronic voting in Moscow, alleging that it was rigged to prevent the faction from winning certain seats.

For example, the faction believes that one of its own, the popular politician Valery Rashkin, lost his State Duma seat due to rigged voting. Rashkin was leading in his local district by a margin of 1.35%, with just 0.41% of the votes left to be counted. Once all ballots were tallied, he ended up losing by a whopping 13.87% to Timofey Bazhenov of the ruling United Russia party.

In protest against electronic voting, the party has held unsanctioned demonstrations in the center of Moscow, and party leader Gennady Zyuganov has called for an investigation.

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