Russia’s Supreme Court has ruled that candidates from the anti-war party Yabloko cannot run in next month’s State Duma election. The court pointed to campaign financing breaches, banned social platforms and copyright violations.
The ruling was issued Monday in Moscow, and further details of the reasoning were published on Wednesday. DR reports that the court set out three main violations as grounds for barring the party’s candidates from the ballot.
According to the Supreme Court, Russia’s financial watchdog identified about 80 million rubles, roughly six million Danish kroner, transferred to party members. The transfers are said to have come from 310 foreign citizens, including in Germany, Canada, Turkey and the United Kingdom, between April 2023 and August 2026.
The court said the payments breached rules on campaign funding. Yabloko says the money has been repaid and argues the court has not presented sufficient evidence to the contrary.
The second stated violation concerns distribution of campaign material through foreign information services that are blocked in Russia, including Instagram and Facebook. The third concerns copyright, after the party used an illustration from Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and a still from the film adaptation without permission.
Several hundred people gathered outside the courthouse in Moscow during Monday’s hearing, which lasted several hours. When the decision became known, they chanted “shame,” according to DR.
Reporting points to political motive
The investigative exile outlet Vjorstka reports that neither the financing questions nor the copyright issues were likely the real reason for the exclusion. Citing unnamed sources and a poll that has not been published, it says the party stood at 9.3 percent about a month before the vote. That would be well above Russia’s five percent electoral threshold.
In an analysis for the exile broadcaster Dozhd, journalist Mikhail Fishman writes that such a decision is hard to imagine without approval from President Vladimir Putin. He adds that it was equally hard to imagine the electoral commission clearing Yabloko to run without the president’s acceptance.
Yabloko has campaigned openly as an anti-war party, with slogans including “For peace and freedom.” Speaking to Novaya Gazeta, the party’s Moscow chairman, Kirill Gontcharov, said the party was removed because a unified anti-war movement in parliament would be politically significant. He described that as something that has not happened in Russia for 30 years.
A survey published last month by the independent Levada Center, which is labeled a foreign agent in Russia, showed support for the country’s armed forces in the war in Ukraine falling compared with the previous month. Two thirds of respondents still expressed support, while opposition to the war rose to 24 percent.
