Sofia Davydenko21:05, 10.08.26

A lawsuit against the opposition party was filed by a pro-Kremlin political force.

The Supreme Court of Russia has ruled to disqualify the Yabluko party from the State Duma elections, BBC News Russian Service reports .

Russian media reports that Yabluko is the only party with an anti-war stance that made it onto the ballot.

It is known that the initiative to remove the opposition force was taken by the pro-Kremlin Rodina party, whose position was supported by the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Central Election Commission, and Rosfinmonitoring.

The session was broadcast on the Supreme Court’s VKontakte page. According to the publication, a crowd of about 500 people gathered near the courthouse in the morning – mostly young people who came to support Yabluko.

What were the accusations?

The claims were divided into three parts. The first concerned the alleged illegal use of someone else’s intellectual property in campaigning: the songs “Let There Always Be Sun” and “Let There Be No War,” as well as the emblems of other parliamentary parties – without the permission of the copyright holders.

Special attention was paid to visual materials. According to the plaintiffs, the photo of Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev required his consent to be retouched, and the photo of the CEC Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova was published without mentioning the author. The list of claims also included footage of blogger Victoria Boni, an episode from Bondarchuk’s “War and Peace” and even a dove – the symbol of the “Apple” itself, which was allegedly taken from the Flaticon library in violation of the license.

The second block of accusations concerned money. The lawsuit stated that materials in support of the party on the resources of “foreign agents” and in foreign social networks were paid for, and the amount of promotion exceeded 88 million rubles. The third block was devoted to the party’s alleged support for the “international LGBT movement,” which is recognized as extremist in Russia.

The representative of “Rodina” convinced the court that “Yabluk”‘s call for an urgent ceasefire and signing a peace agreement with Ukraine is tantamount to an encroachment on the territorial integrity of Russia.

Party response

Apple’s lawyers denied all allegations.

“Withdrawing a party with such a program from the elections without any real grounds is a self-exposing of the political system. This decision testifies to the importance of our program much more than any official election results. It is obvious that the demand for peace and freedom today turned out to be much stronger than the authorities assumed… Removing Yabluk from the elections means refusing to dialogue with people who raise questions that are inconvenient for the authorities. We are not talking so much about Yabluk candidates as about those who support them or may support them… The authorities are scared or do not understand all this and are removing Yabluk from the elections,” said Grigory Yavlinsky, head of the Yabluk federal political committee.

The political force announced that it intends to appeal the court’s decision.

Elections in Russia

As a reminder, foreign media have already reported that on the eve of the first parliamentary elections since the start of the war, the Kremlin has increased pressure on the “systemic opposition” – even on parties that were previously used to create the illusion of pluralism. At least 23 politicians have been banned from running, mostly on charges of displaying “extremist” symbols, and the leader of the anti-war movement, Boris Nadezhdin, has been forced to leave the country.

(c)UNIAN 2026