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35 million rubles raised for opposition blogger Navalny’s election fund

An average donator is a 60-year-old woman

Photo ITAR-TASS

Photo ITAR-TASS

MOSCOW, August 8 (Itar-Tass) - Opposition blogger Alexei Navalny, who takes part in the Moscow mayoral election due in September, has raised 35 million roubles for his election fund.

“Our sponsors are mainly rank-and-file people,” Navalny said at a meeting with voters in the North-Western District of Moscow.

“About 25,000 people sent 100, 200 or 500 roubles each. An average donator is a 60-year-old woman,” he added.

After the meeting in which 20 to 25 people took part, Navalny told Tass he would take part in televised debates. He refused to specify, however, what issues he would like to discuss with Acting Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. “If Sobyanin comes to the televised debates, he will learn it there,” the oppositionist said.

Residents of Moscow’s Khoroshevo-Mnemniki district asked him several questions at the meeting about the construction of the North-Western chord highway. Navalny did not give a clear answer as to his stance on that project.

He confined himself to speculations about a high cost of the project and promises to make calculations, while the citizens just wanted to know whether he would stop the construction.

Navalny did not say anything presice about the fate of Moscow markets, but instead said that in case he won the mayoral election he would seek visa requirements with the republics of Central Asia and the North Caucasian region.

“I am the only candidate for mayor who straightforwardly says ‘I am for’ the visa regime,” he stressed. “The others are sort of sitting on the fence,” Navalny noted.

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