Russian court bars anti-war Yabloko from parliamentary election

Russia’s only registered party openly opposing the war in Ukraine has been barred from next month’s parliamentary elections after a court upheld a challenge from a pro-Kremlin nationalist rival.

The ruling against Yabloko removes the only liberal, anti-war party from the ballot after the Central Election Commission had approved its federal candidate list in late July alongside 10 other parties. Those parties either support the war in Ukraine or do not openly criticize it.

“The claims seeking to annul the registration of the federal list of candidates for the State Duma of the ninth convocation, nominated by the Yabloko political party, were granted,” Judge Vyacheslav Kirillov said, according to Al Jazeera.

The case was brought by Rodina, a small pro-Kremlin nationalist party. The BBC reported that Rodina accused Yabloko of publicly supporting an extremist organization by publishing material on its website in support of the “international LGBT movement,” which Russia’s Supreme Court designated as extremist in 2023. Rodina also alleged copyright infringement after a senior Yabloko member quoted lyrics from the Soviet-era song “Let there always be sunshine” in an interview.

Al Jazeera reported that Rodina also accused Yabloko of receiving undeclared campaign support, notably from Western sources. The BBC said Russia’s financial monitoring service claimed during the hearing that Yabloko had received money through third parties from foreign countries, including Germany and the United States. Yabloko denied the allegations.

During the day-long hearing, Yabloko leader Nikolai Rybakov said there was no evidence for the accusations and called the case an unconstitutional attack on freedom of thought by political opponents trying to clear the field of rivals. Afterward, he told supporters the party would appeal.

“We have a long way ahead, and we have a big and important task: to stop deaths and bring the peace back,” Rybakov said. “Everything we do should be dedicated to that.”

Supporters gathered outside the Moscow courthouse during the hearing, many of them young. The BBC described hundreds of people outside the court, while Al Jazeera reported about 100 supporters. Videos posted on social media showed some chanting “Shame! Shame!” after the ruling. Others waved flags, sang songs and carried apples, a reference to the party’s name, which means “apple” in Russian. “For Yabloko. For freedom” was written in chalk on the pavement, the BBC reported.

The hearing became a rare public gathering for Russians opposed to the war. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, public dissent has been restricted under wartime censorship laws that can bring heavy fines or long prison sentences.

Yabloko campaigned under the slogan “For peace and freedom! For a life without fear!” and called for “ceasefire, diplomacy, and peace” and “for a Russia free from fear and political repression.” It has opposed Russia’s war in Chechnya, the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine.

The party has not won seats in the State Duma since 2003, though it has contested every election since. A poll conducted earlier this year put Yabloko at 3% support, below the 5% threshold needed to enter the lower house, Al Jazeera reported. The BBC said Yabloko won 1.34% of the vote in 2021.

Several Yabloko members had already been barred from running, including two deputy chairmen and deputy leader Maxim Kruglov, who was sentenced in June to seven years in prison for social media posts about civilian casualties in Bucha, Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities. The party also suffered a cyberattack last week shortly after launching a donations appeal for its campaign fund, the BBC reported.

Yabloko has received backing from exiled opposition figures including Yulia Navalnaya, widow of the late opposition leader Alexey Navalny, according to Al Jazeera. Both Navalnaya and Navalny are listed as “extremists” in Russia.