On Monday, Russia’s highest judicial body ruled to remove Yabloko, the only registered Russian political party that publicly opposes the Kremlin’s military campaign in Ukraine, from the ballot for the country’s upcoming parliamentary election scheduled for next month.
The ruling came in response to an appeal filed by a pro-Kremlin political party, and resulted in the Supreme Court formally annulling Yabloko’s ballot registration. Just one month prior, Russia’s Central Election Commission had granted the party approval to appear on the ballot, alongside 10 other competing political groups.
Yabloko first emerged as a prominent liberal voice in Russian legislative politics, where it built a long record of consistent criticism of government policy. However, over the past two decades, as the Kremlin consolidated greater control over Russia’s political landscape, the party gradually lost all of its parliamentary seats, fading from formal legislative representation.
In recent years, Yabloko has stood alone as the only registered opposition party in the country that maintains an explicit public stance against the deployment of Russian troops to Ukraine. Its 2024 campaign platform centered heavily on peace advocacy, with slogans calling for an immediate ceasefire, diplomatic negotiations to end the conflict, and measures to prevent nuclear escalation. The party also campaigned on a platform of ending widespread political repression and creating a Russia where citizens do not live in fear of government retaliation.
The ruling has come even as dozens of prominent Russian opposition figures living in exile had publicly urged Russian voters to support Yabloko in the upcoming election. Notable figures backing the party included Yulia Navalnaya, widow of the late prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, as well as exiled opposition politicians Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza.