Russia's Supreme Court on August 10 annulled the registration of the Yabloko party's federal list for the State Duma elections. The decision came 12 days after the Central Election Commission unanimously registered the party's 269 candidates, and five days after Yabloko drew the second line on the ballot paper in a lottery on August 5.
The party has filed an appeal. If the ruling stands, these will be the first elections since 1993 in which Yabloko does not field a federal list.
Several hundred party supporters — mostly young people — gathered outside the Supreme Court building on Povarskaya Street on the day of the hearing. According to one eyewitness, at least 90 percent of those present were under 25. The crowd sang songs, chanted the party's name, and drew pacifist symbols, apples and anti-war slogans in chalk on the pavement. Police asked the crowd to keep the noise down, and the situation did not escalate. When the court's decision became known, people began shouting "Shame!" — after which a senior police officer demanded the chanting stop and gave the crowd two minutes to disperse, threatening to break it up by force otherwise. In the end, no force was used.
"The essence of our disagreement is that we are for peace, and they are for bloodshed. But they understand that people want to vote for peace. And they are afraid of that. That is why they want to remove us from the elections," Yabloko chairman Nikolai Rybakov said, explaining the desire to take the party off the ballot, speaking at the Supreme Court.
Opposition politicians and political scientists link the court's decision to infighting among various groups within the ruling elite and their fear that a legal election campaign would allow opponents of the war to see the scale of mutual support. According to a VTsIOM poll from June 26, 18 percent of respondents said they could vote for Yabloko.
A representative of the party's leadership (speaking anonymously, due to the outlet's undesirable status) said the authorities understand that Yabloko's position cannot be changed. "Preserving human lives, peace, freedom and human dignity — that is the foundation on which Yabloko stands. To give that up for the sake of participating in elections would mean giving up the very meaning of the party's existence," he said. According to him, eight party members are currently in prisons and penal colonies.
A representative of the party's Moscow regional branch linked the removal of the list to a reaction to mass support from abroad, but added that, as a democrat, he cannot forbid people from expressing personal opinions. "In reality, the 'guilty party' [in the removal from the elections] is the mass support [by Russian citizens] for Yabloko's peaceful position. In the world of Russian power, where everything is bought and sold, they try to explain it by someone's foreign financing," he said. The politician also said that in recent days, people near the party's office on Pyatnitskaya Street have been reacting to party flags with exclamations like "Look, Yabloko!": "A month ago, nothing like this was happening."
According to a representative of the Moscow branch, the liquidation of Yabloko is unlikely. He noted that the party is participating in eight regional legislative elections and regularly fields candidates in municipal elections. Yabloko has put forward 135 candidates in single-member districts for the State Duma elections — the Moscow branch representative said the party has developed a strategy for single-member districts, although it had never relied on them before, devoting its resources to the federal list.