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A month ago, Russia’s anti-war Yabloko party was disqualified from the State Duma election. That was only the beginning.

Source: Meduza
Mikhail Tereshchenko / TASS / Profimedia
  • Russia’s Supreme Court removed Yabloko’s federal party list from the State Duma election, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, on spurious grounds a month ago, on August 10. Yabloko was the only party to openly campaign on an antiwar platform, running under the slogan “For Peace and Freedom.”
  • The disqualification didn’t knock Yabloko out of the race entirely: the party also nominated 135 candidates in single-mandate districts and planned to run in regional parliament elections in seven regions.
  • After the federal list was struck, courts across several regions began disqualifying single-mandate candidates, most often in lawsuits filed by direct competitors. Yabloko now has only 119 single-mandate candidates left, according to its website: 16 previously registered candidates have already been removed.
  • In the Sverdlovsk region, six Yabloko candidates were detained at once on charges of displaying “extremist” symbols — mostly over old social media posts featuring photos of Alexey Navalny or images associated with him. The administrative charges automatically ended their campaigns. Amid the crackdown, Maxim Petlin, head of the party’s regional branch, temporarily left Russia, fearing possible prosecution.
  • Over the past month, regional lists were pulled in four of the six regions — Pskov, Sverdlovsk, and Kaliningrad, plus Karelia. Yabloko remains on regional ballots only in the Novgorod and Tomsk regions, and in Tomsk a lawsuit seeking to remove its list has also been filed but has not yet been heard.
  • Yabloko says it’s being obstructed on the campaign trail. According to data the party has compiled, such cases have occurred in at least 21 regions: campaign videos are being denied airtime, leaflets and posters are being sent to prosecutors for review on suspicion of “extremism,” and candidates are being issued warnings and cautions.
  • Yabloko is continuing to campaign and has tried to challenge its candidates’ disqualifications in court, so far without success.
  • The party has recommended that its supporters skip remote voting in the State Duma election and instead go to polling stations on September 20 to spoil their ballots in the party-list vote.

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