The suit against Atamanchuk was filed by his district rival, Andrei Titov, a candidate from the Greens party. The stated grounds were a campaign leaflet that the plaintiff claims contains "information of an extremist nature."
According to case materials, the leaflet referred to a "fratricidal conflict" and "rivers of blood and an ocean of human grief," and called for concluding an "immediate ceasefire agreement" with Ukraine.
On September 10, a day before the court ruling, a protocol was drawn up against Atamanchuk under the administrative article on the so-called discrediting of the army, over the same leaflet. According to Kavkazsky Uzel, processing the paperwork after the pensioner's detention took several hours, during which he was not given water. The publication notes that Atamanchuk was not given a copy of the protocol.
Atamanchuk himself noted that the wording in Titov's lawsuit and in the police protocol were almost identical. "The text of the lawsuit almost word for word matched the protocol that a police officer had drawn up against me the day before," Kavkazsky Uzel quotes him as saying. "The same phrases, identical accusations of extremism and discrediting the army. Right in court I told Titov that their mutual actions clearly betray collusion." Yabloko's press service reported the same.
Atamanchuk became the 19th Yabloko candidate in single-mandate districts to be removed from the State Duma elections on lawsuits filed by rivals, the party said.
Before retiring, Atamanchuk worked as a pediatrician. According to sources, he had been targeted over his anti-war stance before: in 2024 a criminal case was opened against him over repeated discrediting of the army, which was later closed. Before that, he was sentenced to compulsory labor on accusations of slander over pacifist leaflets and of contempt of court. The pensioner was also fined 50,000 rubles over publications about the war and arrested under a protocol on disobeying police. In 2023, he was reportedly threatened with a basement if he defended himself and refused to sign documents the investigators wanted.
On August 10, the Russian Supreme Court granted a lawsuit to cancel the registration of Yabloko's federal list in the State Duma elections. The complaint alleged that the party violates copyright and campaigns on extremist slogans. On August 17, a court reviewed the appeal and left the ruling in force. After that, single-mandate Yabloko candidates began to be removed from races in the regions.