The leader of the Russian opposition party Yabloko has condemned the public burning of his party’s books by self-proclaimed Russian Orthodox Christian activists.
Sergei Mitrokhin said on March 17 that he was waiting for an official reaction from President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church to what he called an “act of vandalism.”
On March 15, activists from a group called “God’s Will” entered Yabloko’s Moscow offices and took all the books and brochures displayed near the entrance.
They later publicly burned all the Yabloko materials near a monument to Adam and Eve outside a Moscow metro station, calling Yabloko a party of Satanists and perverts.
A video of the incident was later placed on the website of the movement “For Russia, Putin, and People’s Front.”
The movement later issued an apology to Yabloko.