‘A chance to vote for peace, freedom, and a life without fear’

Russia’s Supreme Court barred the anti-war Yabloko party from upcoming parliamentary elections. Here’s how the hearing went.

After months of pressure from Russian authorities against the only anti-war party that was registered for the upcoming State Duma elections, the other shoe finally dropped on Monday: the Supreme Court ruled to remove Yabloko from the race. The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by the nationalist Rodina party, which accused Yabloko of “extremism”, foreign financing, and copyright violations. Novaya Gazeta reports on how the hearing unfolded, how the party responded, and what could happen next.

The case to remove Yabloko from the State Duma race was heard by Supreme Court judge Vyacheslav Kirillov, known for a number of past politically sensitive rulings. It was Kirillov who declared the Memorial human rights group “extremist”, rejected a lawsuit by Alexey Navalny against prison authorities over his placement in solitary confinement for using “prison slang”, and dismissed anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin’s complaints about the collection of signatures for his presidential bid.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the courthouse on Moscow’s Povarskaya Street before the Yabloko hearing began, applauding and chanting the party’s name. A journalist from the outlet SOTAvision and Yabloko’s own press service put the crowd at around 500 supporters by the time proceedings started.

Not everyone was allowed inside. The livestream showed a nearly empty courtroom at the outset, with only the parties to the case and a handful of journalists present; several dozen more were let in as the hearing went on, according to Yabloko.

During the hearing, Grigory Yavlinsky, chair of Yabloko’s federal political committee, published a statement saying the party had received “millions of messages of support” from across Russia in recent weeks.

“Yabloko offered people a chance to vote for peace, freedom, and a life without fear. That is the most important thing right now, and no other party in Russia can offer anything like it. That is why they are trying to remove Yabloko from the election and take away people’s chance to vote for what is now vital to them — and, in a larger sense, for our country’s future,” Yavlinsky wrote.

Meanwhile, at a Central Election Commission meeting held at the same time as the hearing, CEC chair Ella Pamfilova approved the text of the federal ballot but urged for it not to go to print yet. “Don’t rush; under no circumstances should you send it to print. We’re checking it, and there may be some amendments,” she said.

A ChatGPT-generated image and a revolutionary poster

At the hearing, Rodina’s lawyer, Alexey Novoselov, detailed the Yabloko materials that the nationalist party says constitute “illegal campaigning” or copyright violations. One key episode concerned a 27 July interview with Yavlinsky, which Novoselov claimed used, without attribution, the phrase “may there always be sunshine, may there always be Mama”, as well as the phrase “if only there were no war”, which the plaintiffs argued was taken from a 1958 play.

Rodina also objected to images and symbols used by the party, claiming Yabloko had posted logos belonging to other political parties and an edited photograph of Dmitry Medvedev without permission from rights holders. The hearing separately referenced a drawing published by Yabloko depicting Medvedev and influencer Viktoria Bonya.

Another item in the lawsuit was an image captioned “Lisbon to Vladivostok”. Novoselov argued that because the image had been created using ChatGPT, Yabloko should have credited OpenAI as the rights holder or author. When Yabloko’s team asked whose copyright the image supposedly infringed, Rodina’s lawyer said he meant the developers who “wrote the code”.

Rodina further objected to a historical photograph of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, with its representative telling the court the rights “belong to someone in the US military”. Asked by the judge who exactly had taken the photograph, the representative admitted he did not know the author or rights holder, but insisted it was “obviously someone in the US military”.

Rodina also claimed Yabloko’s logo was borrowed from a 1920 Soviet propaganda poster by avant-garde artist El Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, and objected to a frame in a video interview with Yavlinsky that it said resembled a scene from Sergey Bondarchuk’s film War and Peace. Yabloko representative Vitaly Isakov countered that the battle scene illustration in question differed substantially from the original.

When Yabloko asked whether the rights holders of any of the disputed materials had ever contacted Rodina, the plaintiff’s representative said no such contact was “required”.

‘A political talk show’

Yabloko chair Nikolay Rybakov told the hearing he considered the case historic: never before in Russia’s history had a party already registered for an election been removed from the ballot. In his words, Rodina had confused “the Supreme Court courtroom with a political talk show”.

Yabloko’s lawyers spent several hours reading out extensive rebuttals. Party representative Vitaly Isakov noted that the publications by Yabloko supporters that Rodina cited as “campaigning” had actually appeared between 2012 and 2023 — long before the current election campaign began — and so could not legally be treated as campaign materials. He called their use to justify removing the party from the ballot “absurd”.

Rodina also sought to have statements by Yabloko members declared “extremist”, citing articles opposing the persecution of LGBT people and the party’s calls for peace. Representative Gadzhi Aliyev said these materials had not been used in the current campaign and contained no calls to extremism, and rejected the claim that Yabloko’s platform called for violating Russia’s territorial integrity — a claim he said was refuted by the platform itself, just 43 words long.

Additionally, Rodina accused Yabloko of copyright infringement over its dove logo. Isakov responded that the image Yabloko uses is distributed under a free licence, and that doves themselves are not campaign material even if they reflect the party’s political stance. He noted that the images cited by Rodina differed from Yabloko’s own, including in shape and colour, and ran through the various dove images named in the complaint — among them “an origami-style dove” and “a dove made of triangles”. One dove in the lawsuit, he pointed out, was even depicted “hanging from a thread”, whereas Yabloko’s dove is alive.

Allegations of foreign financing

A CEC representative told the court that Russia’s financial monitoring agency, Rosfinmonitoring, had allegedly uncovered “foreign financing” of Yabloko before and during the campaign, submitting a document marked “for official use” as evidence. “Since the document contains information marked ‘for official use’, it naturally will not be disclosed during the court proceedings. So as not to close the process, we will allow the parties to review the document and have them sign a non-disclosure agreement,” the judge said.

According to Rosfinmonitoring, 12 Yabloko candidates had previously received money from abroad, and seven donors who had received money from abroad had donated a combined 16,900 rubles (€180) to the party. Rybakov said the candidates had sold off all foreign-held shares in accordance with the law ahead of the election, and that the party had returned funds from questionable sources.

The prosecutor backed Rodina’s demand to remove Yabloko from the race.

‘Doubts about their sanity’

Rybakov called Rodina’s claims “illiterate and politically motivated” and said there were no legal grounds to remove the party from the election. Yabloko also announced it would file a defamation suit against Rodina.

“Make no mistake — our lawyers will leave no stone unturned in dismantling these illiterate and politically motivated accusations against the party. There are no legal grounds to deprive tens of millions of Russian citizens who support peace of the chance to vote for their representatives — for Yabloko. Some of the arguments even raise doubts about the sanity of the text’s authors,” Rybakov said.

He also urged supporters not to come to the Supreme Court building and not to give in to possible provocations.

A chance at reinstatement

Yabloko said it would appeal the ruling and pledged the party would continue its work.

In this case, Russia’s Supreme Court acted as a court of first instance, meaning the ruling can be appealed — with the appeal to be heard by the Supreme Court’s Appeals Panel. Election-rights cases carry a shortened deadline, requiring any appeal to be filed within five days of the ruling. Even with the court of first instance removing Yabloko from the race, that does not mean the party will immediately and permanently disappear from the campaign and the ballot.

Rybakov also said his opponents were siding with “the people who are ratcheting up aggression in our society, ratcheting up anger, ratcheting up hatred”.

He added: “These are the same people who once already brought about an armed mutiny in Russia.”