Rally in support of arrested Yaroslavl mayor brings together 5,000 – organizers

(Interfax – YAROSLAVL, Russia. July 16, 2013) Supporters of the arrested mayor of Yaroslavl, Yevgeny Urlashov, have held a rally in the city on Tuesday.

“We estimate that about 5,000 people took part in the rally,” one of the meeting organizers, Andrei Alexeyev, told Interfax. The head of the press service of the Yaroslavl regional police authority, Alexander Shikhanov, told the agency the event had brought together about 3,000 people.

Participants were leaving birthday messages for Urlashov, who turned 46 on Tuesday, while the rally organizers promised to pass them all to the mayor, who was moved to a pretrial detention center in Moscow the night before.

The speakers included State Duma deputy Anatoly Greshnevikov, Yaroslavl municipal council deputy Alexander Vorobyov, public figure Irina Prokhorova, and opposition leader Ilya Yashin. They branded the criminal action against Urlashov as a “political contract.”

A member of the Yaroslavl regional legislature, Vladimir Tikhomirov, read out a letter to President Vladimir Putin in which he asked for Urlashov’s release. Rally participants were putting their signatures under the letter.

The rally lasted about an hour and a half.

Yaroslavl’s mayor was detained on July 3. The next day, Urlashov, his deputy Dmitry Donskov, City Hall official Maxim Poikalainen and the mayor’s advisor Alexei Lopatin were charged with extorting a large bribe. Their suspected accomplice, Andrei Zakharov, was charged as well. The five men were subsequently remanded into custody.

Another criminal inquiry was later opened against the Yaroslavl mayor on the count of accepting another bribe of 500,000 rubles.

Urlashov has pleaded not guilty, his lawyer Sergei Golubenkov told Interfax.

Investigators plan to ask the court to remove Urlashov from the post of Yaroslavl mayor.

On July 7, Urlashov topped the Civil Platform’s party ticket in the elections to the Yaroslavl legislature.