Press Release, 25.07.2026

Photo: Petrozavodsk City Council

Today, 25 July, Territorial Electoral Commission No. 1 of Petrozavodsk refused to register the list of candidates put forward by Yabloko for the elections to the Petrozavodsk City Council.

The formal grounds for the refusal was the absence of documents required for registration. According to the commission’s decision, the documents had been signed by a person who did not possess the relevant authority, and the commission therefore considered them not to have been submitted in the manner prescribed by law.

At the same time, the law requires an electoral commission to notify a party, no later than three days before its meeting, of any shortcomings identified in the documents submitted for registration. Karelian Yabloko received no such notice.

The electoral commission’s meeting was postponed several times. It had originally been scheduled for Friday, 24 July, then moved to 12:00 on Saturday, and later to 16:00 the same day.

The day before, the St. Petersburg Electoral Commission had made a similar decision, refusing to register Yabloko’s list of candidates for the elections to the Legislative Assembly.

The party considers both decisions to be unfounded and politically motivated, and intends to appeal them.

“The authorities are systematically removing the only opposition party from the elections. They see how many people support Yabloko, and they are afraid of it. We will seek to have these unlawful decisions overturned and will defend citizens’ right to vote for Yabloko,” said party Chairman Nikolai Rybakov.

Yabloko’s list for the Petrozavodsk City Council elections was headed by Tatyana Olenina, associate professor at the Department of Land Law and State Registration of Real Estate at the Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography and a party member, history teacher Marina Fomina, and individual entrepreneur Andrei Malafeyev. In total, the party nominated 15 candidates.

It should be noted that in May this year, Dmitry Rybakov, leader of the Yabloko faction in the Petrozavodsk City Council, was detained on a charge of “displaying extremist symbols” and spent the night in a police station. After being fined under this article, he lost the right to stand in elections for a year.

At the same time, the Republic of Karelia became the first region where Yabloko’s list was registered for the elections to the Legislative Assembly.