Hundreds of teenagers waited hours outside Russia’s Supreme Court to witness the only antiwar party lose its place on the ballot. Then a police officer raised a megaphone to talk about draft offices.

All day on August 10, Russia’s Supreme Court heard a lawsuit seeking to revoke the Yabloko (“Apple”) party’s registration for the State Duma elections. Hundreds of people stood outside the courthouse on Povarskaya Street the entire time, supporters of the only antiwar party that could theoretically participate in the vote. Most were Muscovites under 30, many of them teenagers. For many of them, it was their first street protest; some were not even old enough to vote in September. They passed apples around, and in the evening they went home peacefully, though deflated by the court’s ruling. The independent journalists’ cooperative Bereg was there too. Meduza is translating Bereg’s report on what happened in central Moscow and what young Yabloko supporters had to say.

Hundreds of Russians turned out to support Yabloko at the courthouse. The audio version of Bereg’s dispatch from Moscow

Nikolai Rybakov, the chairman of Yabloko, arrived at Russia’s Supreme Court to a welcome better suited to a rock star: the crowd shouted and applauded, and people pressed in to shake his hand or at least to touch him.

The hearing was set to begin at 10 a.m. It ran all day, and it ended with the court barring Yabloko from the elections to the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament. The suit was brought by the Rodina (“Motherland”) party, which listed a long roster of reasons Yabloko should be kept off the ballot. Four of them mattered most.

Rodina’s central complaint was that Yabloko had repeatedly violated copyright law in its campaign materials.

Rodina also argued that Yabloko should be barred from the race because too many people were campaigning for it online and because its campaign was allegedly financed from abroad. And it accused the party of extremism: Yabloko has spoken out against the persecution of LGBTQ+ people, and it has called for a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine — a demand Rodina treats as a call to violate Russia’s territorial integrity.

The courtroom seats 150, but half the seats sat empty: passes for spectators were issued too late. Hundreds turned out in front of the building anyway — at least 500, by Yabloko’s own count. Nearly all of them were under 30, and a good many were teenagers.

Those who couldn’t get into the courtroom watched the video feed on their phones. Some leaned back against the building’s facade; others sat on the curb or on the pavement. Several official cars and two prisoner transport vans were parked in the roadway, and patrols worked the sidewalks: ordinary police, OMON riot police, and Russian National Guard troops. The security officers didn’t cover their faces or tell anyone to disperse — they just talked quietly among themselves.

“Who’s on trial?” asked a boy of about 14, looking around curiously as he came up to a group of young people.

“The Yabloko party.”

“Ah, got it,” the teenager said, nodding. “Let’s see what happens!”

A young man ran up to the crowd with a sack of apples and handed them out to anyone who wanted one — including the teenager who had just joined the supporters.

Some had come prepared, in T-shirts and scarves with the party logo and accessories shaped like white doves and peace signs. Right by the courthouse doors stood a young woman in a straw hat with a blue ribbon, holding Viktor Vilisov‘s aptly titled book Nas vsekh toshnit — “We’re All Sick to Our Stomachs.” A few people held Yabloko flyers, but no one was handing them out in large numbers; party representatives directed supporters to pick up campaign materials at Yabloko’s headquarters on Pyatnitskaya Street.

“Anything besides flyers?” a boy of about 16 asked.

“No, just flyers.”

Every so often, a teenager the crowd had nicknamed the “Yabloko cosplayer” jogged along the sidewalk in a homemade red cap with a green leaf sticking out of the crown, resembling the party’s logo. In his hands was a big white Yabloko flag, furled around its pole. People kept asking him to unfurl it for photos; he obliged every time, then rolled it straight back up.

Volunteers with big bags worked through the crowd, offering apples, candy, cookies, and water, and collecting litter — there wasn’t a single trash can near the courthouse.

People everywhere were talking about how the hearing might end and which strategy would serve the opposition best in this campaign. Some criticized Yulia Navalnaya, who had publicly called on Russians to vote for Yabloko.

“They should have waited until three days before the vote!” a young man in light-colored pants told a friend heatedly.

“And how is everyone supposed to find out who to vote for [in that little time]?”

“People already know.”

“Some people don’t.”

”Four percent know!”

Meanwhile, inside the courtroom, Rybakov was speaking. The 47-year-old party chairman opened with memories of his school days in Leningrad and of teachers, many of whom had fought at the front or lived through the siege of the city:

Rybakov told the court that the Central Election Commission had found no violations in Yabloko’s paperwork and had voted unanimously to register the party for the election. He said the Justice Ministry reviews the party’s reports regularly and has never found fault with them.

“The plaintiff has confused the Supreme Court with a political talk show,” Rybakov went on, in a reference to the regular appearances that Rodina’s leader, Alexey Zhuravlev, makes on state television to deliver propaganda talking points. “They have brought the court evidence that does not exist, that is [only] passed off as evidence: in fact it is personal fabrications, or quotations pulled out of context, and at times simply absurd notions.”

Rybakov spoke for 20 minutes. In that time, he took apart several of Rodina’s accusations, tried to draw the court’s attention to the incompetence of the plaintiff’s representatives (Judge Vyacheslav Kirillov cut him off), quoted Vladimir Putin (who has himself allowed for the possibility of peace talks), and read excerpts from voters’ letters.

The speech energized the people watching the feed outside. Many thought Rodina’s accusations were so ridiculous that the judge could not possibly heed them, and that Yabloko would therefore stay on the ballot. They had doubts about whether the opposition would actually win seats in the State Duma.

“No, they won’t get in — that won’t be allowed,” a curly-haired young man dressed all in black told Bereg. “The results will be handed down from above regardless.”

Asked why he still thought it mattered to back Yabloko in particular, he said it was a matter of principle to seize the moment — the first time in years that an opposition candidate would appear on the ballot. “The point is for people to know, for themselves, that they voted [with a clear conscience],” he said.

Another young man told Bereg that, all else being equal, he wouldn’t support Yabloko: he considers it “too left-wing,” and he called its platform one-sided — it says nothing, for instance, about a vision for the Russian economy. But all the other candidates, he said, are worse, because they back Putin and United Russia right down the line:

Besides the young people in Yabloko or pacifist gear and the uniformed security officers, the plainclothes eshniki caught the eye — officers from Center E, the Interior Ministry’s anti-extremism directorate. Most tried not to draw attention to themselves, watching from across the street and filming Yabloko’s supporters from a distance. One of them — in sunglasses, a surgical mask, jeans, and a denim shirt — worked his way back and forth through the crowd, pulling out his phone now and then. He was the only person near the courthouse hiding his face.

A young man who was sketching noticed the masked eshnik. He pulled out a postcard with Yabloko’s logo on it and started drawing the officer’s portrait. The officer noticed him too, walked over, and began filming him from inches away on a smartphone. The artist wasn’t rattled. He kept working, showed the eshnik the finished sketch, and walked off. The mask made the officer’s reaction impossible to read.

By the end of the fourth hour of the hearing, only a handful of people were still following the proceedings: Yabloko’s and Rodina’s representatives kept going over the same fine points, and watching them was exhausting. The crowd had thinned since morning, too — some left for good, others stepped out for lunch and planned to come back. At 2:30 p.m., the judge called a half-hour recess, and everyone who hadn’t gone far hurried back to the building in case Rybakov came out to the supporters. Only Yabloko’s lawyers emerged.

Only those who had picked up a pass that morning were let back in, though plenty of seats were still empty.

“Never mind — we’ll be here to meet him,” an elderly woman said with a sigh on her way out through the checkpoint.

People kept hoping anyway, and a small line formed at the doors. Those waiting introduced themselves to one another, traded Telegram handles, and compared notes on what they had seen and heard.

Every so often, shouts and a recording of the chorus of “Yabloko” rang out from one part of the crowd or another — a song by Yolka and IOWA that has become the unofficial anthem of the party’s campaign. Gen Zers happily filmed TikToks to it.

A few young people circled the streets around the courthouse in a white car, waving campaign flyers out the windows with the same song blasting inside. They got bolder and started waving a big Yabloko flag out the window, and this time the police had had enough: a patrol car gave chase. The driver was fined 800 rubles (about $10) — not for disturbing the peace, but for driving without his vehicle registration.

“Russia will be fre—” someone in the crowd began chanting loudly, but was cut off.

“Quiet, quiet, don’t!” a man hissed, with a sideways glance at the police.

The self-censorship frustrated Mira, a Moscow resident whose name has been changed. She said she tries not to miss protests or high-profile trials, and that with so few such gatherings left, it matters to take the chance. She liked that the people who came were behaving so civilly. She was also coming around to the view that nothing in the country can be changed this way:

Muscovites like Mira, with a history of activism, were scarce outside the court. For many of the people Bereg spoke with, all of this was new — and in September, they will make their first trip to a polling station.

“By the time I was 10, Putin had already been in power almost 20 years, and even then I understood it wasn’t normal. In other countries, [leaders] change every four years,” said a young man in a light blue polo shirt. “That’s when I started working on my United Russia relatives to vote [for someone else].”

There were plenty of very young activists outside the court as well — some just out of school, some still in it, all of them too young to vote.

“I worked on my grandmother for ages [not to vote for United Russia], and I barely managed it,” Nika (name changed) said, smiling. “She says, ‘Fine, I’ll vote for your apples.’”

Nika was among the first to arrive; at that point, she said, only a couple dozen people had gathered. She spent a long time choosing what to wear — she considered a hoodie with a big peace sign and a sweater reading “Navalny,” but thought better of drawing extra attention and limited her antiwar symbolism to a small peace-sign pendant.

Outside the court, Nika met Olya (name changed). Olya isn’t 18 yet either, and this was her first time at anything like it, but she had decided to come out for Yabloko almost by accident.

“I saw on Telegram that there was a Gen Z protest outside the courthouse, so I decided to head over,” Olya said. She had come in from the Moscow region, worried that everyone would be gone by evening — but several hundred people were still outside the Supreme Court. She reacted with excitement to everything going on outside and tried to keep up with the news from inside.

She looked completely happy. When she noticed a journalist filming her, though, she asked that no photo or video be published anywhere: “Otherwise … I’ll be in trouble with my family,” she said. Olya said she and her parents hold the same political views, but they would not be pleased to see her turn up at a protest.

A commotion started at the courthouse entrance, and Nika and Olya hurried over to see. Some young people were shooting a video in support of Yabloko: they had unfurled a party flag and an enormous Russian tricolor, and they were chanting “Russia!” at full volume. The police tensed a little but didn’t intervene. A minute later the chant changed, and the crowd was shouting “Yabloko!”

A large man in a blue suit came out of the courthouse, looked with distaste at the crowd of shouting, jumping teenagers, and waved over one of the officers.

“Could you keep it down? There are offices in here,” he complained.

“You’re going to wait somewhere else now,” the officer said, passing the request along to the crowd in the voice of a stern schoolteacher. “People are working here, and you’re shouting.”

The activists rolled up their flags and drifted apart a little, and the officer went back to his car. Now in the eighth hour of waiting, the crowd found new ways to kill time. Some inflated a big red balloon, covered it in Yabloko campaign slogans, and started a volleyball game. Others took chalk to the sidewalk in front of the entrance, and party logos and the words “For Yabloko,” “For peace,” and “For freedom” spread across the pavement.

The police didn’t like that either. They demanded an end to the performances and pulled several people aside to take down their personal information. Nobody was detained.

Passersby reacted to the crowd in different ways. Some were annoyed that the supporters had filled the entire sidewalk, forcing people to squeeze past. Others smiled and gave a barely perceptible nod when they caught an activist’s eye. A few showed their support outright.

“Am I right that the Yabloko hearing is here today?” a young bearded man asked.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Good for them! I should have come too,” he said, raising his fist in approval — and walked on without joining.

In the ninth hour of the hearing, Judge Kirillov finally retired to deliberate. Several hundred people began lining up around the entrance to be among the first to greet Rybakov, and every conversation in the crowd came back to the trial and the feelings it had stirred.

With every minute the crowd pressed tighter around the entrance, and the street beside the court filled with more security officers — in balaclavas and helmets now — and more official cars. Some in the crowd grew nervous.

“If a … commotion starts, you’ll never get out of this crowd,” a man’s voice said.

At some point, people started singing — not Monetochka or Noize MC, but classics from Soviet cartoons: first “A Ray of Golden Sunshine,” then “The Song of the Bremen Town Musicians.” The third song was “Changes” by the band Kino, and the security officers, more or less calm until then, tensed up: the patrol cars let out a low-frequency drone to tell the singers it was time to stop.

The crowd went quiet for a moment, then someone started chanting “Yabloko.” One of the officers took out a megaphone and called for order, menacingly. People complied.

The pause didn’t last. A woman’s voice struck up “Along the Path of Good,” from the Soviet film The Adventures of Little Mook. The crowd picked it up fast, though some of the activists self-censored again.

“Guys, let’s not sing!” a nervous voice called out.

“So we just stand here? Then what’s the point of this protest?”

Judge Kirillov took more than an hour to decide. The moment the feed came back, everyone froze, eyes on their phone screens. When they heard that Yabloko had indeed been removed from the ballot, an angry rumble went through the crowd, and almost at once people started shouting: “Shame!”

The police had had enough. They quickly sealed the street beside the courthouse with an enormous National Guard prisoner transport van and patrol cars; officers in balaclavas lined up along the curb; riot police blocked the sidewalk.

“Five minutes, and you’ll get what you wanted,” one of the officers shouted furiously into a megaphone — not a promise that Rybakov was about to come out, but a threat of rough detentions. He demanded that people clear the area around the court as fast as possible.

The crowd churned, and some people tried to break away and run. One after another, the spectators who had made it into the hearing that morning came out of the building and looked at the chaos by the steps, uncomprehending. Some of the women had been crying.

Seeing that some people refused to go, the officer returned to threats.

“You have two or three minutes, and if you don’t disperse, don’t come complaining,” he said into the megaphone, calmer now but still angry. “Nobody’s going to come get you out of the enlistment office, young men. I’ve warned you.”

At last Rybakov came out of the building with his team. The crowd met him with applause and cheers, then started chanting “Yabloko!” and “Well done!”

Turning a green apple over in his hands, Rybakov smiled sadly and thanked the crowd for its support. He urged supporters not to lose heart, as Yabloko still had five days to appeal the Supreme Court’s ruling:

The supporters applauded again and chanted “Thank you!” With every second, the mood grew more anxious. Would the security forces make good on their threats, with this many journalists present and the leader of a registered political party standing in the middle of it?

“Nikolai, they’re going to round us up!” a young voice shouted.

“Yeah, somebody get us out of here,” another said.

“Here’s what we do: we disperse carefully now,” Rybakov said. “Nobody shouts anything — [then] nobody should get rounded up, I very much [hope]. But leave one at a time, so it isn’t a march, so they can’t call it a provocation.”

Supporters gathered around Rybakov for selfies and goodbye hugs. Waiting their turn to leave Povarskaya Street, people talked about whom to vote for if Yabloko failed to overturn the ruling on appeal.

“The Greens, maybe?”

“They’re pro-war too.”

“New People are pro-war as well — they passed all those [repressive] bills.”

“What about Democratic Initiative, or whatever it’s called? Something with ‘direct democracy’ in it.”

“Honestly, I have no idea what that is.”

A woman of about 50 joined the young people’s conversation. She said that she and other opposition supporters who had “been following [politics] a long time” had no illusions that Yabloko would be left on the ballot, but that she came to the courthouse anyway, for “a few hours of freedom.”

“I turn 18 on the 19th, as it happens,” a young man told her, smiling shyly.

“So you’ll be able to come on the 20th?” [Voting runs September 18–20, with the main day on the 20th.]

“Yes, of course I’ll go. I just need to listen to Ekaterina Mikhailovna [Schulmann] first.”

“And Yulia [Navalnaya] too.”

“Yes, and Yulia, of course!”

The officer switched on his megaphone again.

“Citizens! The hearing is over, please vacate … the sidewalk,” he said, stumbling as he realized how absurd his demand was. “Keep moving toward the subway, don’t linger.”

Seeing that people were in no hurry to leave, Rybakov volunteered to walk them to the subway himself. He led them toward the station, keeping an eye out for anyone having trouble with the security officers. Along the way he kept taking selfies, joking, and answering questions — even personal ones, like which station he lives near. When someone suggested he join them for dinner at McDonald’s, he politely declined.

The line “He’s just like Lyosha!” — [a diminutive for Alexey Navalny] — rippled through the crowd.

The security officers escorted the group all the way to the subway. At the entrance, Rybakov thanked his supporters once more, and they responded with applause. The crowd then dispersed into the station.