Yabloko Is Not the Apple of the Kremlin’s Eye

Igor Stomakhin’s photo reportage of yesterday’s youth protest outside the Russian Supreme Court

Yabloko supporters outside the Russian Supreme Court, which decided whether the party should be barred from upcoming parliamentary elections (10 August 2026). Photo: Yevgeny Messman/TASS/Picture Alliance via DW

Following a nine-hour hearing, the Russian Supreme Court sided with the suit brought by the Motherland (Rodina) party and disqualified the Yabloko party’s federal list of candidates in the upcoming State Duma elections. Most of the plaintiffs’ claims concerned alleged copyright infringements in Yabloko’s campaign materials. In addition to these allegations against Yabloko, suspicions of “extremist” activity and foreign funding were also raised.

The case was heard by Judge Vyacheslav Kirillov, who has previously been involved in high-profile political trials. In particular, he ruled that the human rights organization Memorial was “extremist” and dismissed Alexei Navalny’s suit against the Federal Penitentiary Service and the wardens at the penal colony where he was imprisoned.

At least five hundred people gathered outside the Supreme Court building. They handed out apples [because yabloko means “apple” in Russian] and sang songs in support of the party. After the hearing concluded, security forces threatened the protesters with arrest and told the young people amongst them that they would be sent to a military enlistment office. Yabloko’s chair, Nikolai Rybakov, stated that the party had not broken the law and would appeal against the court’s decision within the five-day period stipulated by law.

“Moscow, 10 August 2026. Hundreds of people came to support the Yabloko party. Party chair Nikolai Rybakov had called on supporters to come to the Russian Supreme Court’s hearing of a lawsuit to disqualify the party from the elections. The suit was filed by the pro-Kremlin Motherland party. Alexei Zhuravlyov, Motherland party chair: ‘Freedom of speech is a word that would be good to shut up.’ The Yabloko party supports ending the war. Nikolai Rybakov: ‘We support the signing of a ceasefire agreement so that people stop getting killed.'”

Yabloko’s co-founder Grigory Yavlinsky wrote on Telegram that the authorities were afraid of the party’s campaign platform, which urged voters “to vote for peace, life, and liberty without fear,” because it is supported by an ever-growing number of people from across the political spectrum.

“Disqualifying a party with precisely this manifesto from the elections without any real grounds is a clear demonstration of the political system’s true nature,” he said.

DW has rounded up reactions to the court’s decision and asked experts what Yabloko’s disqualification means for the elections to the State Duma, which are slated for 18–20 September 2026.

Navalnaya: The Kremlin got scared and switched to ‘Plan B’

Motherland filed suit against Yabloko in the Supreme Court just as exiled Russian opposition politicians and cultural figures had publicly called on Russians to support Yabloko in the State Duma elections. Amongst those who had joined this appeal were Yulia Navalnaya, Lyubov Sobol, Ilya Yashin, writer Dmitry Bykov, and human rights activist Oleg Orlov.

After the court’s ruling was made public, Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Anti-Corruption Foundation founder Alexei Navalny and the organization’s current leader, said that the Russian authorities had originally planned to let Yabloko run in the elections but not let it garner more than two percent of the vote. [Parties need to clear a five-percent threshold to be seated in the Duma.] Later, however, “the Kremlin got scared” and “switched to Plan B,” disqualifying the party, she opined.

“They saw something happening that they didn’t want to see: people are beginning to unite. It wasn’t even a matter of support for Yabloko. The fact of the matter is that millions of Russians have a chance to say what they really think about Putin and about the war,” Navalnaya wrote on Telegram, adding that the Anti-Corruption Foundation had its own “Plan B.”

Exiled politician Andrei Pivovarov, coordinator of the Russian Antiwar Committee’s Consuls project, told DW that the opposition did not regard their support of Yabloko as a way of achieving instant political change or ending the war. Rather, they wanted to demonstrate the scope of antiwar sentiments in Russian society.

“There are a dozen parties on the ballot who support the war and one that supports peace. Even if Yabloko was seated in the Duma, the war wouldn’t end. But it would show that there are many antiwar Russians,” Pivovarov said. He argued that Yabloko had become the symbol of protest voting and the public’s antiwar sentiments wouldn’t vanish with the party’s disqualification from the elections.

Why did the authorities want to let Yabloko stand in the elections?

Political analyst Ivan Preobrazhensky, speaking to DW, suggested that Yabloko’s removal from the race could have been the result of “Kremlin bungling” or a power struggle amongst various influential factions. One of his theories is that a security forces bloc linked to the FSB may have backed Yabloko as a counterweight to New People, which is seen as the pet project of Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy head of the presidential administration. According to another theory, Kiriyenko himself was attempting once again to generate the appearance of political competition, but underestimated the strength of antiwar sentiment.

According to Preobrazhensky, the authorities have underestimated the number of antiwar Russians who are willing to rally behind any political force advocating an end to the war. He noted that even official opinion polls point to significant support for this. He believes that Yabloko’s eligibility to stand in the elections had been agreed in advance, but the rise in support for the party alarmed the authorities.

Political analyst Ilya Grashchenkov wrote on his Telegram channel that the Supreme Court’s ruling could lead to a rise in the poll ratings of the mainstream opposition parties. According to him, Yabloko was initially allowed to stand in the election to act as a spoiler for New People: the assumption was that the votes of antiwar voters would be split between the two parties and thus would not go to a single political force calling for an end to the war.

“We’re expecting VTsIOM’s poll results in a week’s time. I reckon part of the opposition will see a bump again,” he wrote.

Political analyst Mikhail Vinogradov also expressed surprise at Yabloko’s removal from the ballots. In his view, the party’s presence would have enabled the authorities to announce a modest outcome at the polls for it, present this as evidence of public support for the war, and provoke fresh disillusionment amongst antiwar Russians. Furthermore, the campaign would have helped to single out new politically engaged citizens. Even if Yabloko had secured a mandate in the State Duma, Vinogradov believes, this could have been used to demonstrate to voters the futility of the party’s presence in parliament.

“There are certainly advantages to Yabloko’s not being registered. But the authorities are keeping this under wraps for the time being,” he concluded.

What does Yabloko’s ouster from the elections mean?

Yabloko’s ouster will complicate matters for independent election observers since the party loses the right to dispatch its own representatives to polling places, Roman Udot, an expert on elections in Russia, argues. In the past, Yabloko eagerly provided passes to independent observers, although they can still get accreditation from other parties, including the Communists, New People, and even United Russia, Udot adds.

“Besides, it’s not a certainty that a schoolteacher who back in the day would help to rig elections because she was told that this was how her school would get moneys for repairs will behave the same way when her husband or son could be called up for combat. People’s interests are at stake here: it’s every man for himself, especially with all the talk about a mobilization,” says Udot.

Udot argues that the involvement in the campaign of New People, with its proposal to end the war in Ukraine, is significant, even if the party is controlled by the Kremlin: politicians are forced to respond to public sentiment.

“We may see a shift from hawks to lesser hawks, and then to doves,” says Udot.

Furthermore, in rigged elections, it is not only the official result that matters but also the public’s impression of the election campaign, he says.

“It all depends on the mood of the populace. If the people show that the wind is changing and that there is a certain desire, and people start casting their votes for a particular stance, then some politician will catch the wind and capitalize on it.”

Do the authorities have a grip on the situation?

Elections to the Duma are taking place amidst growing anxiety in Russian society, Margarita Zavadskaya, a senior researcher fellow at the Finnish Institute of Foreign Affairs, reminded DW in an interview. She pointed out that FOM (Public Opinion Foundation) reported that 57% of the Russians it polled in late July were anxious about the state of affairs in their country, the highest percentage recorded by the pollsters since the military mobilization of autumn 2022. Although FOM’s polls should be treated skeptically, an uptick like this at the height of summer testifies to the fact that “something is out of whack,” Zavadskaya argues.

Zavadskaya sees a connection between the public’s dour moods and the increasingly frequent Ukrainian drone attacks, the deaths of civilians and warehouse fires caused by these attacks, and rumors of a new military mobilization. According to her, the summer of 2026 has been the most anxious since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. At the same time, the numbers of the most bellicose pro-war Russians have likely been dropping.

Anxiety is mounting in the Kremlin as well, since it is the authorities who have the most at stake in the election results, the political analyst argues.

“The ideal scenario for the Kremlin is boring elections with a sparse turnout in which nothing happens. But we can see that this scenario is now unlikely to materialize, because what’s happening on the eve of the elections doesn’t look normal, nor does it suggest that the authorities have a grip on the situation,” Zavadskaya told DW.

Source: Yevgeny Dyuk, “Yabloko’s ouster from the elections: reactions from politicians and experts,” Deutsche Welle Russian Service, 10 August 2026. Translated by the Russian Reader

Statement of (partial) interest: Ages ago, in another life, I took part in a protest rally led by Ilya Yashin, then head of Yabloko’s youth wing, on Nevsky Prospekt in Petersburg. Also, my boon companion is personallly well acquainted with current Yabloko party chair Nikolai Rybakov who, they fear, will soon be arrested and imprisoned for his temerity. ||||| trr

A Guide for the Perplexed Russian Voter

A Voter’s Strategy
Grigorii Golosov
Polit.ru
September 6, 2016

Compared with previous elections to the Duma, the parliamentary elections scheduled in Russia for September 18, 2016, have a number of peculiarities. And it is not only because the elections will be held under a mixed system, proportional and majoritarian simultaneously. The 2016 election campaign is different from all previous campaigns.

Grigorii Golosov, a political scientist and professor at the European University in St. Petersburg, talked to Polit.ru about the unusual aspects of the current election campaign, its likely outcome, and alternative scenarios and strategies that the politically active segment of society should keep in mind.

It is obvious what is unusual about these elections: they are taking place in September rather than December. They were not scheduled for September accidentally, of course, but to things easier for United Russia.

The election campaign has gone completely unnoticed. In addition, it is quite short compared with the campaigns we have had earlier. It is completely obvious [the regime] is counting on the fact that it will fail to catch voters’ attention at all.

Campaigning on the streets of Moscow, August 23, 2016. Photo courtesy of Kirill Zykov/Moscow City News Agency

This means people are basically expected not to have political motivations to vote in these elections. What motivations could they have if they simply know nothing about the elections or who is running in them? This, in turn, means the people organizing the election campaign are counting on the fact that the bulk of voters will be people who are obliged to vote for one reason or other, or have a material stake in voting.

We essentially know what segments of the populace these are: employees of state-funded organizations; pensioners; and employees of certain major enterprises where management may be able to influence how they vote. Since their reasons for going to vote are so unpolitical, they will vote as they are told to vote, meaning for United Russia.

Voting during United Russia’s primaries in Khabarovsk, May 22, 2016. Photo courtesy of United Russia

Given such a scenario, it follows that United Russia will receive a substantial majority. I think this year they won’t go after the really big numbers that you can achieve only by falsifying the turnout. Probably, however, the optimal scenario for the authorities would involve United Russia’s getting fifty to fifty-five percent of the proportional vote according to party lists.

In addition, it is already clear, given the fact that the electoral districts are mainly controlled by the regional authorities, that United Russia will also get an overwhelming majority of the seats in the [single-mandate] districts. Thus, in tandem with their numbers in the proportional voting part of the ballot, United Russia will again be able to control the Duma completely and reliably support the legislation drafted by the presidential administration and the government.

The alternative scenario would consist in more people coming out to vote, and some of them coming out for political reasons.

Frankly speaking, even those people who support Vladimir Putin have no particular political motivation to vote for United Russia, because Dmitry Medvedev is heading the party in these elections. He bears no responsibility for foreign policy, whose successes have been trumpeted constantly. Both Medvedev and United Russia are linked in voters’ eyes with domestic policy and, thus, with the economic situation in Russia. A considerable part of Russian society now senses that it is getting worse.

Dmitry Medvedev meeting with pensioners in Lipetsk on August 30, 2016. Photo courtesy of United Russia

However, many parties involved in these elections exhibit no less loyalty to Putin and his foreign policies than United Russia does, and under these circumstances, politically motivated voters have no particular incentive to vote for the ruling party.

We should also not forget that support even for Putin’s foreign policy is not universal in Russia, and pollsters have always recorded a fairly considerable group of people who do not support this policy in any way and oppose Putin. Strategically, the current election campaign is meant to discourage this segment of Russian voters from going out to vote at all. They have been sent a variety of signals to the effect that voting is pointless, the elections are pointless, and they had better stay home.

Will it work? It is quite likely that it will, and so I find United Russia’s optimistic scenario more plausible. However, there will undoubtedly be a certain number of politically motivated voters turning out for the elections. How many votes the United Russia list will garner in proportional voting will depend on this number.

Regardless of the published opinion poll results, the spread could be quite wide. I would suggest somewhere between forty percent (in the event that the turnout of political motivated voters is quite high) and fifty-five percent. But this will have no significant impact on the makeup of the State Duma, because in any case it will be controlled through the single-mandate MPs. Besides, many parties who might get votes from politically motivated voters are not likely to clear the five-percent barrier for entering the Duma.

However, precisely because the outcome of these elections are politically unimportant in terms of controlling the State Duma, they could be politically important as a demonstration of Russian society’s attitude toward the authorities in general, meaning the attitude of its politically engaged segment. In this sense, I would argue opposition-minded voters should understand they can reduce United Russia’s vote total, thus showing it does not enjoy unanimous support, or they can increase it by not coming out to vote.

What should they do if they do come out to vote? If they do not dislike it intensely, they can vote for the party that has adopted a directly oppositional stance, i.e., for PARNAS. Or they can vote for a party that, while generally deferent to the authorities, exercises this deference in a particular way, i.e., for Yabloko.

PARNAS on the campaign trail. Photo courtesy of Alla Naumcheva and PARNAS

Taking into account what I have said about small parties not clearing the five-percent barrier, voters can, nevertheless, vote for the small parties. If, for whatever reason, they definitely do not feel like voting for either PARNAS or Yabloko, they can vote for other small parties, even if they do not particularly like them.

It would probably be pointless to vote for parties who have no chance of garnering votes, but there is a limited number of minor parties that have some chances. I would identify the Communists of Russia, the Pensioners Party, the Party of Growth, and, possibly, Motherland. I have mentioned Motherland partly because there is nationalist feeling within society, and party because they ended up in the first slot on the voting ballot. During the free elections that took place in Russia in the 1990s, first place in the voting ballot always gave the party listed there a palpable bonus of about one percent of the vote.

Communists of Russia campaigner handing out the party’s pamphlets. Kirov Region, September 6, 2016. Photo courtesy of comros.info

It is not a matter of whether these parties are decent or not. During these elections, if they espouse genuinely oppositional views, the strategy of politically motivated voters should be based not on facilitating a particular candidate’s victory or impacting the breakdown of mandates. (From this point of view, it does not matter who gets into the Duma.) Their strategy should be based only on showing the policies now pursued by the Russian authorities do not enjoy unanimous support. And this can be achieved by doing what I have talked about.

Translated by the Russian Reader