Russia’s Liberal Democrats have announced an in-person dating forum called ‘LDPR with Love’
FILE PHOTO. Couple taking a selfie on Red Square in Moscow. © Ilya Pitalev; RIA Novosti
The Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) has invited people from across the country to attend its own in-person dating forum next month, after a number of popular online dating services, including Tinder, stopped working in the country.
The event, ‘LDPR with Love’, is promised to be “the largest dating marathon in Russia” and will take place sometime in September. According to a statement published on the party’s website on Monday, the event is intended to help people find their soulmate in their own city and “find a worthy life partner according to common interests.”
“Loneliness is like a disease, you urgently need to become happy,” the statement read, adding that hundreds of people have already signed up for the event.
Registration to attend the forum is open until August 10, and it is said that every application will be reviewed by a psychologist, after which recommendations will be given on finding a partner, RIA Novosti reported last month when the initiative was first announced.
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“Holding such forums could help replace the Tinder dating service that left Russia,” the LDPR press service said, noting that the party designed the application process for the forum to be similar to Tinder’s. The app stopped working in the country in June.
LDPR leader Leonid Slutsky, who has led the party since the death of its iconic leader, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, last year, said in a statement that many young people in Russia today seek to build a career but seem to struggle to find a mate.
He expressed hope that forums like ‘LDPR with Love’ will “create conditions for lonely hearts to meet” and suggested that the idea could be picked up by other regions.
According to statistics cited by the LDPR in its latest invitation, the percentage of lonely young people in Russia is growing, with as many as 54.4% of men between the ages of 20-34 and 42.9% of women reporting that they do not have a partner.
