Russia's Supreme Court barred Yabloko, the country's only openly anti-war party, from September's State Duma elections on Monday, as a court in Pskov sentenced the party's deputy chair to more than 11 years in a penal colony for calling for a ceasefire. The appeals panel upheld a lower court decision to remove Yabloko's party list from the ballot. Dozens of supporters who had gathered outside the Supreme Court building were detained, along with others in nearby streets and courtyards.
The lawsuit to strike Yabloko from the ballot was filed on 7 August by Rodina, an ultranationalist party whose chair, State Duma deputy Aleksey Zhuravlyov, claimed lawyers had "found a huge number of violations" in Yabloko's campaign. Party chair Nikolai Rybakov described the Supreme Court hearing as "a mockery". "You understand, they understand, that in essence Yabloko has been removed from the election because we stand for peace and freedom," Rybakov said outside the court.
"Those who are striking us from the ballot stand for the opposite political course." Yabloko's election manifesto, 43 words long, calls for "a ceasefire agreement, diplomacy and the achievement of peace." Hours later, a court in Pskov sentenced the party's deputy chair Lev Shlosberg to 11 years and one month in a general-regime penal colony and banned him from administering websites for six years. He was convicted under Russia's "false information about the army" law over a Telegram repost from February 2022, days after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He was also found guilty on a separate charge of "discrediting" the armed forces over remarks made on a YouTube debate in which he advocated "the earliest possible ceasefire in Ukraine." The closing arguments took place last Friday without any of Shlosberg's three lawyers present: the court refused to postpone the hearing and imposed a state-appointed lawyer despite the defendant's explicit refusal.
During his final statement, the judge repeatedly interrupted him. This is the third criminal case against Shlosberg and his second trial since the invasion. In June 2023 he was designated a "foreign agent".
A subsequent case was opened in June 2025 for repeat "discrediting of the army" over a debate with historian Yuri Pivovarov, and a further charge was brought over a Telegram post showing a British tabloid front page depicting a bloodied woman next to a photograph of Putin. In December 2025, Russia's financial intelligence unit added him to its register of "extremists". He rejected all charges as unfounded and cited procedural violations throughout the proceedings.
In his final statement, Shlosberg said that "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," he said. "No one in history has yet managed to cheat time.
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