Russia’s top court bars anti-war Yabloko from parliamentary vote

Russia’s Supreme Court barred Yabloko from contesting September’s parliamentary elections, removing the country’s only officially registered party that opposes Moscow’s war in Ukraine from the ballot. The ruling, delivered in Moscow, immediately drew about a hundred protesters outside the courthouse, where they chanted, “Shame! Shame!”

The case had been put before the court after it said on Friday that it would consider a lawsuit seeking to exclude Yabloko from the race. That challenge was filed by Rodina, a pro-Kremlin nationalist party, turning the question of who could appear on the ballot into a direct test of political competition in Russia’s parliamentary system.

Yabloko leader Nikolay Rybakov said the party would appeal the decision after speaking to the media in Moscow. His party has long been Russia’s only liberal, anti-war party, and its exclusion leaves voters with even fewer legal avenues to register opposition to the war in Ukraine.

The ruling also landed against a bleak electoral backdrop for Yabloko. An earlier poll put the party at 3% support, below the 5% threshold needed to enter Russia’s lower house, the State Duma. Even so, the court’s move did more than reflect weak polling: it cut the party out of the contest entirely and shifted the dispute from voter choice to judicial gatekeeping.

The decision fits a broader pattern of pressure on critics of the war, with anti-war activity often treated by the state as disloyalty or a security risk. In that environment, courts do more than interpret election rules; they help decide which political views can survive inside formal politics. By keeping Yabloko off the ballot, the Supreme Court narrowed the already limited field of opposition and left Russia’s September vote more tightly controlled than before.