Press Release, 2.06.2026

Photo: A Yabloko protest action “Stop removing us from elections!” in 2010 outside the Central Electoral Commission building / Photo by Vasily Shaposhnikov, Kommersant

The Yabloko faction in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly has prepared a draft federal initiative to repeal an unjust ban on electoral participation. Under current law, a person fined for the “demonstration of extremist symbols”, including for publications in the Internet, loses the right to stand as a candidate for one year.

The draft has already been submitted to the legal department of the St. Petersburg parliament. Should the Legislative Assembly support the initiative, it will be forwarded for consideration to the State Duma.

Yabloko’s draft law concerns Articles 20.3 and 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offences. Under Federal Law No. 67-FZ “On the Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right to Participate in a Referendum of Citizens of the Russian Federation,” a citizen who receives an administrative penalty under these articles is deprived of the right to be elected for one year.

In practice, law enforcement officers draw up reports under these articles, particularly under Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences, and courts issue rulings imposing penalties for publications containing the name or photograph of Alexei Navalny, whom the Russian authorities have placed on Rosfinmonitoring’s list of terrorists and extremists. In effect, the provisions of the Code of Administrative Offences are being used not to combat extremism, but to remove opposition candidates from elections.

“An administrative case is not a criminal offence. A person is not found guilty of a crime, yet is deprived of the constitutional right to participate in elections. In practice, we can see clearly that this provision has come to be applied ahead of elections in order to bar candidates unwanted by the authorities,” said Olga Shtannikova, head of the Yabloko faction in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly.

“We drew up and submitted this draft law because we consider the existing provision to be unjust and disproportionate, and, furthermore, because practice shows that it is being used for the manifestly unlawful settling of political scores. A person fined for a post allegedly containing extremist symbols should not lose the right to stand in elections for a whole year,” said Dmitry Anisimov, a Yabloko deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly.

It should be noted that since November 2025, party leaders have been fined under Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences in St. Petersburg (Olga Shtannikova, Nikolai Rybakov and Alexander Shishlov), Pskov (Artur Gaiduk and Tatyana Fyodorova), Veliky Novgorod (Yelena Ivanova and Anton Kostryukov), and Karelia (Emilia Slabunova and Dmitry Rybakov).

Yabloko members are contesting the fines at appeal and cassation stages.

Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov has filed a complaint with the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in his case concerning the “demonstration of extremist symbols”. The complaint emphasises that the lower courts violated the principle of the presumption of innocence, disregarded Rybakov’s alibi, erroneously found him guilty of acts that had not been imputed to him in the report, used fragments of “reasoning” from another case bearing a different person’s name, and more. The complaint has been registered at the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

It is evident to Yabloko that this form of serial persecution constitutes not a “campaign against extremism” but nothing other than the fulfilment of a political order to remove the party’s leaders and top politicians from the forthcoming federal and regional elections of 2026.