Russia upholds Yabloko party’s election ban and jails its deputy chair

Yabloko Stripped from Ballot and Deputy Chair Sentenced to Over 11 Years in Same-Day Court Actions

Usagevpn.com – Two separate courtrooms delivered coordinated blows to Russia’s last openly anti-war political party on Monday. In Moscow, the Supreme Court’s appeals panel confirmed that Yabloko would not appear on the ballot for September’s State Duma vote, while in Pskov a lower court handed down an 11-year-and-one-month prison sentence to the party’s deputy chair, Lev Shlosberg, for remarks urging a ceasefire in Ukraine.

The simultaneous rulings effectively eliminated the final visible liberal-peace voice from Russia’s legislative contest and locked a senior figure behind bars in a general-regime penal colony. Dozens of Yabloko supporters who had assembled outside the Supreme Court building were detained by police, with additional arrests made in adjacent streets and courtyards.

The Supreme Court Ruling

The case to remove Yabloko from the electoral register had been lodged on 7 August by Rodina, an ultranationalist party. Its chair, State Duma deputy Aleksey Zhuravlyov, asserted that his lawyers had uncovered “a huge number of violations” in Yabloko’s campaign paperwork. The appeals panel sided with the lower court that had originally ordered the party’s list struck from the ballot.

Party chair Nikolai Rybakov dismissed the hearing as “a mockery” and addressed reporters outside the courthouse shortly after the verdict.

“You understand, they understand, that in essence Yabloko has been removed from the election because we stand for peace and freedom,” Rybakov said. “Those who are striking us from the ballot stand for the opposite political course.”

The party’s election manifesto, a document of just 43 words, called for “a ceasefire agreement, diplomacy and the achievement of peace.” Its brevity underscored how narrowly Yabloko framed its electoral platform around ending the war that began with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Pskov Trial of Lev Shlosberg

Hours after the Supreme Court decision, a court in Pskov convicted Shlosberg under Russia’s “false information about the army” statute. The triggering act was a Telegram repost made in February 2022, days after the invasion commenced. A second conviction rested on a “discrediting the armed forces” charge tied to remarks he made during a YouTube debate in which he advocated “the earliest possible ceasefire in Ukraine.”

The sentence carried an additional six-year ban on administering websites. Closing arguments had taken place the previous Friday without any of Shlosberg’s three retained lawyers present; the court declined to postpone the hearing and imposed a state-appointed counsel over the defendant’s explicit objection. During his final statement, the judge interrupted him repeatedly.

This marks the third criminal case brought against Shlosberg and his second trial since the invasion began. In June 2023 he was designated a “foreign agent.” A subsequent case opened in June 2025 for repeat “discrediting of the army” over a debate with historian Yuri Pivovarov, and a further charge was added over a Telegram post displaying a British tabloid front page showing a bloodied woman beside a photograph of Vladimir Putin. By December 2025, Russia’s financial intelligence unit had placed him on its register of “extremists.”

Shlosberg rejected every charge as unfounded and cited procedural violations throughout the proceedings. In his final statement he offered a longer reflection on the party’s future.

“Ahead of (Yabloko) lies a new window of historic opportunity. We do not know when it will open, when the light will become strong enough to push back and dispel the darkness. But this will inevitably happen, because the laws of history, like the laws of nature, are stronger than the voluntarism of temporary rulers. No one in history has yet managed to cheat time. Unlike good, evil has no access to immortality.”

Addressing those still present after the Monday ruling, he added simply: “You will have to live with this.”

International Reaction

Amnesty International condemned the sentence within hours. Marie Struthers, the organisation’s director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, characterised the prosecution as retaliation for the exercise of free expression.

“His arbitrary prosecution and conviction are an act of clear retaliation for exercising his right to freedom of expression by calling for peace,” Struthers said.

She urged Russian authorities to release Shlosberg immediately, overturn his conviction, and repeal the legislation that criminalises anti-war speech.

Yabloko’s History and Political Role

Founded in 1993, Yabloko takes its name from the initials of its three founders: Grigory Yavlinsky, Yuri Boldyrev, and Vladimir Lukin. It remains Russia’s oldest continuously functioning liberal opposition party. The party cleared the five-percent parliamentary threshold exactly once, in 1999, and has not held seats in the State Duma since.

From 2006 through 2025, Yabloko maintained membership in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) and cooperated with the European Green Party. Its representatives also participated in the work of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, giving the party a limited channel of contact with Western parliamentary institutions even as domestic space narrowed.

Analysts note that Yabloko endured within Russia’s tightly controlled legal political space for over three decades because the Kremlin judged it useful as a magnet for liberal and discontented voters. Its leadership consistently avoided radical activism and coordination with opposition figures operating outside the system, which allowed authorities to preserve a minimal appearance of democratic plurality. The Monday rulings and the Pskov sentence mark the end of that long, carefully managed tolerance.