Russia’s Supreme Court takes up lawsuit seeking to remove anti-war Yabloko party from State Duma ballot; hundreds show up to support the party
Hundreds of people lined up outside Russia’s Supreme Court in Moscow to show support for the Yabloko party, which faces a lawsuit seeking to remove it from the ballot for the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament.
The Supreme Court hearing was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. but started about a half hour late, around 10:30 a.m.
Yabloko chairman Nikolai Rybakov had urged supporters the day before to come to the court. The party’s own count put the crowd at about 500 people already in line, with more continuing to arrive. The Telegram channel Slovo Zashchite reported that a police van had arrived at the court building.
The Rodina party filed the lawsuit on Friday, August 7, seeking to remove Yabloko from the ballot by canceling the registration of its federal candidate list.
Rybakov said the lawsuit’s “main argument” centered on support from the party’s followers: “your posts, videos, likes.” “They [the authors of the lawsuit] believe this cost 88 million rubles over the past 10 days, and estimated the total reach at 527 million users. That is roughly four and a half times more than the total number of voters in Russia,” he said.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.