Leonid Volkov claimed that they (Zheleznyak’s firm) threw all their weight behind Noon Against Putin, and that’s why it succeeded.
This is false.
On August 30, 2023, Maxim Katz launched a campaign of public pressure on FBK about their participation in the March 2024 electoral process.
On September 6, 2023, Leonid Volkov posted a video on his YouTube channel where he essentially spoke out against participating in rallies. Hence the meme “We won’t let them count us.”
On September 29, 2023, the European Petersburg channel, prompted by Maxim Reznik, launched the Noon Against Putin project.
Around October 9, 2023, the first “Unicorn herd” coalesced — people applying public pressure in favor of election participation.
On October 19, 2023, the “Countdown to the RF presidential election” channel (aka 150 Days) began work, the main motivation being to keep up the information background about participating in the election at noon (until the final stage, the calls were only on Instagram; later they appeared on Twitter and Telegram).
On October 11, 2023, Maxim Reznik and Ruslan Shaveddinov argued for over an hour about the Noon Against Putin action. Ruslan spoke openly against it.
On October 31, 2023, possible nomination of Boris Nadezhdin became known; from that moment, the main focus of the “Unicorns” was to come to vote on March 17 and vote for Nadezhdin (or anyone else — the main thing was to show up). And to be on the ballot, Nadezhdin needed signatures.
On November 16, 2023, Ekaterina Duntsova launched her run; part of the “Unicorns” focused on spreading information only about her.
On December 27, 2023, Ekaterina Duntsova was not allowed on the ballot; all the resources of the “Unicorns,” and subsequently Duntsova’s team, focused on supporting Nadezhdin with the same motivation. In the campaigning, we gradually began adding the noon narrative.
Starting mid-January, the sudden “Queues of Hope” began; a corresponding channel appeared, and on streams Boris Nadezhdin was often asked when to come — at noon on the last day? He expressed a logical, correct position: the main thing is to come. “Noon” is just the cherry on top.
Only on February 1, 2024, after five months of silence, did FBK join the action.
At the same time, they began demanding that everyone talk about it — that Maxim Katz call on people to participate right away — when there were only rumors that Nadezhdin would be barred.
What was the result?
Many who were abroad could not vote, because they came at noon rather than early in the morning, as Nadezhdin urged.
In Russia, the action failed, because there were too many precincts; at exactly noon there were hardly any queues, even in St. Petersburg. However, over the whole day queues were spread fairly evenly. And the “Queues against Putin” action — where citizens stood in line to vote against (for Davankov, for another candidate, for multiple marks) — worked out quite well. Maxim Katz said this in his first results video, concluding that this is a good strategy and we should not forget about it.
What’s the point of this speech?
Once again, Zheleznyak’s firm is fabricating reality in its favor. It so happened that all their strategies proved to be failures, so they adopted the strategy of someone who is not Katz and not the “Unicorns,” not Duntsova and not Nadezhdin. At the same time, I know for a fact that even Reznik himself got utterly fed up trying to negotiate with them, which is why he ran around on Twitter, spitting bile and biting those who didn’t want to do exactly as he said — because Alexei expressed his will!
Alexei’s will, in truth, was to participate and campaign — but the sectarians reinvented the first part.
But Katz lieslieslies