Russia bars Yabloko from election, shutting out its only registered anti-war party

Russia’s Supreme Court has barred the liberal Yabloko party from taking part in September’s parliamentary elections, removing the country’s only officially registered party that openly opposes Moscow’s war in Ukraine from the ballot.

The court ruled on Monday in favour of a lawsuit brought by Rodina, a small pro-Kremlin nationalist party, which sought Yabloko’s exclusion from the election. The ruling further narrows the already limited space for political dissent in Russia, more than four years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Yabloko leader Nikolai Rybakov, who attended the day-long hearing, rejected the allegations against the party and said the decision would be appealed.

‘Excluding Yabloko from the election means refusing dialogue with people who ask questions that are uncomfortable for the authorities,’ Rybakov said.

The lawsuit accused Yabloko of receiving undeclared campaign support, including from Western countries. Rodina also alleged that the party had publicly supported an organisation designated as extremist in Russia and had violated copyright by publishing lyrics from a Soviet-era song.

Russia’s financial monitoring service claimed during the hearing that Yabloko had received money through third parties from foreign countries, including Germany and the United States. Yabloko rejected the accusations.

The Kremlin-controlled Central Electoral Commission had approved Yabloko’s candidate list in late July, alongside those of 10 other parties.

A rare public show of support

Several hundred people, mostly young, gathered outside the Moscow courthouse during the hearing in a rare public show of support for an anti-war political force.

Some carried apples – a reference to Yabloko, which means ‘apple’ in Russian, while others waved flags. Videos posted on social media showed supporters chanting ‘Shame! Shame!’ after the verdict was announced.

Yabloko’s campaign had been conducted under the slogan ‘For peace and freedom! For a life without fear!’ The party advocated a ceasefire, diplomacy and peace, as well as a Russia free from fear and political repression.

The court hearing offered a rare opportunity for Russians opposed to the war to gather publicly, as demonstrations and other forms of dissent have been increasingly restricted under wartime censorship laws.

Pressure on Yabloko

Yabloko had already faced significant pressure before being removed from the ballot.

Several party members had been barred from running, including deputy chairmen and deputy leader Maxim Kruglov, who was sentenced in June to seven years in prison over social media posts concerning civilian casualties in Bucha, Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities.

Another senior Yabloko member, Lev Shlosberg, is on trial on similar charges and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. He has also been designated a ‘foreign agent’.

Boris Vishnevsky, another Yabloko deputy chairman, was designated a ‘foreign agent’ in 2024 and subsequently had to leave the St Petersburg city council after legislation was adopted barring people with that designation from elections or public office.

The party also suffered a cyberattack last week, shortly after launching a fundraising appeal for its election campaign.

Yabloko has not won seats in the State Duma since 2003, but it has contested every parliamentary election since then. Once one of Russia’s leading liberal political forces, it has gradually been pushed to the margins as the Kremlin tightened its control over politics.

Russian opposition figure Lev Shlosberg arrested for calling for ceasefire in Ukraine

Anti-war message gains attention

Yabloko’s election campaign had nevertheless given the party a platform to promote its anti-war message more widely than usual.

Its position included calls for a ceasefire agreement, diplomacy and peace. Several Russian opposition figures living abroad had urged voters to support the party, including Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, as well as politicians Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Yabloko chairman Rybakov sought to distance the party from what he described as unwarranted support from opposition figures abroad, apparently in an effort to avoid giving the authorities additional grounds for excluding it from the election.

Social media also saw a wave of videos supporting Yabloko, many of them featuring young Russians holding apples or referring to the fruit rather than explicitly using political slogans.

Rybakov said the party had not paid for the videos and that those posting them supported Yabloko because they wanted to live in Russia and did not want to be killed.

Nikolay Petrov, a senior research fellow at the NEST Centre, said the Kremlin may initially have allowed Yabloko to contest the election to provide an outlet for discontent while using the party’s traditionally low vote share to demonstrate the limited popularity of its anti-war position.

But the campaign’s focus on peace may have changed that calculation.

No clear anti-war alternative on the ballot

Other Kremlin-aligned parties have criticised Yabloko’s position on Ukraine.

Sergei Mironov, head of A Just Russia, called on the Prosecutor General’s Office and Justice Ministry to examine the party’s activities. Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov also criticised Yabloko for not supporting President Vladimir Putin’s policies.

Rodina, which brought the Supreme Court case, also accused Yabloko of exceeding campaign spending limits and said its position on Ukraine was unlawful.

Yabloko rejected the accusations.

With the party now excluded, the remaining parties contesting the election either support the war in Ukraine or do not openly criticise it.

The ruling comes as the war increasingly affects daily life in Russia. Ukrainian long-range drone attacks have repeatedly targeted energy infrastructure and logistics hubs, disrupting fuel supplies and businesses.

At the same time, public opposition to the war remains difficult to assess because of restrictions on dissent. According to the Levada Center, a non-governmental pollster designated by Russian authorities as a ‘foreign agent’, 66% of Russians said in July that they supported the actions of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine – the lowest level recorded since February 2022.

Sources: Reuters, AP, BBC

Caption: Russian Yabloko’s party leader Nikolai Rybakov (R) and his lawyers attend a hearing on a lawsuit to deregister the federal list of the party candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections, at the Russia’s Supreme Court, in Moscow, Russia, 10 August 2026. Russian political party Rodina filed a lawsuit to deregister the Yabloko party’s federal list of candidates on 7 August. The plaintiffs claim they found ‘a host of legal violations’ in their opponents’ documents, ranging from what they consider illegal campaigning on banned social media to allegedly extremist statements. EPA/SERGEI ILNITSKY