Last week, the court removed “Yabloko” from the election list, satisfying a lawsuit filed by a nationalist party that harshly criticized the rival for its peaceful stance and accused it of receiving foreign funding and violating copyright laws.
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“The Supreme Court’s appellate panel upheld the court decision to cancel the registration of Yabloko’s candidates for the State Duma elections on the federal list,” the party said in a statement, also indicating that it will appeal the decision.
During the court session, police pushed the party supporters out of the building along with journalists who came to report on the decision. Among them was a correspondent from the AFP news agency.
“Many people were detained today. We also see that police officers are very nervous today,” Kirill Goncharov, head of Yabloko’s Moscow branch, told the independent publication Novaya Gazeta.
Earlier, he estimated that more than 60 party supporters were taken to nearby police stations. According to K. Goncharov, some detained teenagers have already been released.
In the courtroom, party leader Nikolai Rybakov called these detentions “intimidation.”
With this decision, the court took away from voters who do not support the war in Ukraine, ongoing for over five years, the last chance to see at least one anti-war candidate on the ballot.
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Evgeny Lyapin, who was near the court building, told AFP that he came simply “to support what remains of a fading democracy.”
“I am neither a member nor a supporter of Yabloko, but I know that what is happening today is a blow to democracy across the country,” he said.
18-year-old Maria, who came to support the party, said: “The president wants a great country; he constantly talks about it, but we want a free country.”
In another case, Yabloko’s deputy chairman Lev Shlosberg was sentenced on Monday to 11 years and one month in prison for comments criticizing Moscow’s military offensive in Ukraine.
Most of President Vladimir Putin’s opponents are imprisoned, exiled, or dead, and Yabloko is the only liberal party still operating in Russia.
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