Pro-Kremlin Yedinstvo faction splits

Today, a number of deputies in the State Duma’s Yedinstvo (Unity) faction raised their voices against the proposed merger of this pro-Kremlin faction with the Otechestvo (Fatherland) movement and the creation of the coordinating council with the Narodny Deputat (People’s Deputy) and Rossiyskiye Regiony (Russian Regions) deputy groups. The Yedinstvo deputies representing the all-Russian Generation of Freedom movement declared their withdrawal from the faction. “Our movement cannot be part of a bureaucratic machine,” they are quoted as saying. Yedinstvo, having effected the above merger, “has definitively turned into the party of nomenclature,” the Generation of Freedom’s statement says. Moreover, the dissenting deputies announced they were determined to join the liberal Union of Right Forces faction.