Russia’s Supreme Court has barred all candidates from the liberal Jabloko party from the State Duma election on September 20, leaving the ballot without an officially anti-war party.
DR reports that the country’s highest court ruled in favor of a case brought by Rodina, a small nationalist pro-Kremlin party. All 450 seats in the lower house of the Russian parliament are up for election in September.
According to DR, one central element of the case was that Jabloko had supported an organization deemed extremist by sharing content in support of the LGBTQ+ community. That community has been classified as extremist in Russia since 2023. The case also concerned an alleged copyright breach involving a Soviet-era song and undeclared party funding.
Jabloko chairman Nikolaj Rybakov stressed that the ruling has not yet entered into force, and that the party has five days to appeal. Several hundred demonstrators gathered outside the courthouse in Moscow after the decision, some of them holding apples. The word Jabloko is Russian for apple.
Cleared in July, blocked in August
DR notes that Jabloko regained its right to field candidates in July 2026. The Moscow Times reported that Russia’s Central Election Commission approved more than 400 Jabloko candidates on July 29, 2026, allowing them to run on a pro-peace platform.
The election date was set in advance by presidential decree. TASS reported on June 16, 2026, that Vladimir Putin had signed the decree scheduling the vote for September 20, 2026. The text of the decree was published on the State Duma’s website.
Jabloko has not held seats in parliament since 2003. Official results from the most recent Duma election gave the party about 1.3 percent of the vote, well below the 5 percent threshold, DR reports. Jakob Tolstrup, a professor at the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University, describes those official figures as deeply manipulated.
Tolstrup told DR that Russian elections have long been a farce, and that the ruling underlines the absurdity of holding a vote at all. He described the legal provisions used against Jabloko as elastic clauses that are regularly invoked to discredit or remove political opponents. He added that the suspension did not surprise him, given the pressure on the party over the past year.
DR cites official Russian polling showing that support for United Russia stood at its lowest level since the start of the war in July 2026. Most Russian institutions have fallen 15 to 20 percentage points in popularity over the past year, according to the same figures. Tolstrup points to the prolonged war, rising Russian casualties, a worsening economy and intensified Ukrainian strikes inside Russia.
He also said that authoritarian systems often see criticism and opposition activity surface around parliamentary elections. By excluding Jabloko, Putin appears to have prioritized control over legitimacy, according to the professor.
