The Supreme Court of Russia on August 10 removed the liberal Yabloko party from the State Duma election, ruling on a lawsuit filed by the pro-Kremlin Rodina party, whose leader Alexei Zhuravlev was a member of the LDPR faction in the previous convocation. Representatives of the Central Election Commission (CEC) and the Prosecutor General's Office supported the lawsuit.
Judge Vyacheslav Kirillov, who granted the lawsuit, in April 2026 declared the human rights center Memorial an extremist organization. CEC representative Sergei Sakharov in 2017 represented the commission at a meeting that barred Alexei Navalny from participating in the presidential election.
During the hearing, Rodina's copyright claims were supplemented by a document from Rosfinmonitoring, Russia's financial intelligence agency, about alleged foreign funding of the party. Yabloko explained that the money was transferred by Russian citizens from abroad who themselves received funds from foreign sources.
Yabloko was to be the only party on the ballot advocating a swift ceasefire with Ukraine. In response to the party's removal, foreign agent Anton Mikhalkchuk, a former coordinator of Open Russia, sent 1,100 rubles to Rodina leader Zhuravlev and proposed initiating a complaint against the party for foreign funding.
Sources differ: Meduza writes that the decision to allow Yabloko to participate in the election was made in the Kremlin, and the Kremlin hastily reversed it amid the party's growing popularity. Ekho claims that the reversal may have occurred after someone convinced Putin to remove the party, and notes that such a development is hard to believe without the president's personal sanction.