Press Release, 21.07.2026

Photo: Anton Kostik, Dmitry Khorzov, and Yaroslav Tambovtsev

District electoral commissions in St. Petersburg have issued Yabloko’s candidates for the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly with notices citing supposedly identified deficiencies in the documents (i.e. “failure to provide” the necessary documents) required for registration. Yet all the documents were submitted in full, as recorded in the official inventories. In one case, there is video footage of the documents being submitted. The commissions are refusing to give the candidates prompt access to the case materials.

Notices were received by:

Anton Kostik (District Electoral Commission No. 48, single-mandate constituency No. 21, Moskovsky District);
Dmitry Khorzov (District Electoral Commission No. 19, single-mandate constituency No. 20, Moskovsky District);
Yaroslav Tambovtsev (District Electoral Commission No. 26, single-mandate constituency No. 18, Krasnoselsky District).

The notice of deficiencies in Anton Kostik’s documents arrived on Sunday, 19 July, at 21:59. The commission cited the absence of a certificate from his main place of employment and a written declaration of the absence of foreign financial assets.

Photo: Yabloko boxes with candidates’ documents bearing Yabloko’s slogan “For Peace and Freedom! For a Life Without Fear!”

Dmitry Khorzov faced a longer list of “deficiencies”:

– failure to provide information on his main place of employment and certified copies of supporting documents;
-failure to provide a declaration of the absence of foreign assets;
– objections to the way information on the candidate’s minor child had been provided (including the type of the child’s identity document).

In Yaroslav Tambovtsev’s case, the commission reported that two certificates were missing.

Pavel Shapchits, a Yabloko member of the St. Petersburg City Electoral Commission, visited District Electoral Commission No. 26 and examined the file. Instead of the three original documents submitted by the candidate (a two-page income statement, a three-page statement on the absence of property abroad, and a three-page statement on the absence of expenses exceeding income), the file contained only the first document, on two pages, along with three copies of it. Yet the acknowledgement of receipt states: “1 item, 8 pages, 1 copy”.

Both district commissions handling Kostik’s and Khorzov’s cases are located on the same floor, in neighbouring offices, in the Moskovsky District administration building (129 Moskovsky Prospekt). The candidates note that the commissions refused to promptly allow them to review the submitted documents. Given the vague wording of the notices, it cannot be ruled out that access will only become possible after the question of registration has already been decided.

The candidates are effectively being denied the opportunity to make any changes or additions to their previously submitted documents within the statutory deadline, even though this right is guaranteed by law, St. Petersburg Yabloko stresses.

The deadline for Dmitry Khorzov to remedy the “deficiencies” has been set at 22 July 2026. The question of his registration will be considered on 24 July at 17:45. The question of Anton Kostik’s registration will be considered on 23 July; the time has not yet been announced.

St. Petersburg Yabloko regards what is happening as a deliberate, systemic practices of using district electoral commissions to unlawfully remove undesirable candidates from elections. Documents are submitted to the commissions and recorded in the inventories (and, in Khorzov’s case, also on video), after which they suddenly disappear.

The candidates submitted a full set of documents, as confirmed by the inventories and the video recording. The notices about “missing” documents that were in fact submitted, combined with the refusal to promptly produce the documents, makes the aims behind this electoral arbitrariness plain enough.

The procedure for registering candidates must not become a criminal tool for eliminating political opponents, stresses Dmitry Anisimov, Deputy Chairman of St. Petersburg Yabloko, a deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, and one of the leaders of the party’s federal list for the upcoming State Duma election:

“So much has been said about order having been restored to St. Petersburg’s electoral system. Yet in practice, what we see at the district electoral commissions is disorder that, in its arbitrariness, outstrips even the worst days of document substitution and queues of voting ‘athletic men’ at the 2019 municipal elections.”

If the City Electoral Commission and the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) fail to bring the district commissions into line, such document manipulations risk becoming a norm that would prove catastrophic for the legitimacy of the election, Anisimov predicts.