Press Release, 6.08.2026

Photo: Yegor Karpenkov / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Tomorrow, 7 August, the Supreme Court is due to hear the case brought by Yegor Karpenkov, a candidate for the State Duma from Yabloko, who is appealing against the Central Electoral Commission’s decision to exclude him from the party’s list in the elections.

His exclusion from the list was the result of bureaucratic failures within state agencies, St. Petersburg Yabloko stresses. Karpenkov, a theologian, who believed that Russia and the Church needed people educated in the traditions of Russian and international academic theology, continued his studies abroad after graduating from the Russian Christian Academy for the Humanities — first in the United Kingdom, then in Italy and France. While studying, he obtained an Italian residence permit, which he reported to Russia’s Federal Migration Service. The Federal Migration Service was subsequently absorbed into the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Karpenkov returned to Russia, joined Yabloko and was elected a municipal deputy in St. Petersburg.

In 2021, Karpenkov stood for election to the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, when the electoral commission was satisfied that his Italian residence permit had expired. Now, however, the Central Electoral Commission has cited that same residence permit — which expired eight years ago — as grounds for excluding Yegor Karpenkov from Yabloko’s federal list of candidates.

Yegor Karpenkov describes the sequence of events as follows:

“The Central Electoral Commisson requested information from the Interior Ministry. The Interior Ministry found no record of my having a residence permit, but did find an entry in the archive of the now-defunct Federal Migration Service. The documents show the expiry date in plain Arabic numerals. The Central Electoral Commission refused to read the Arabic numerals, saying: ‘let the Interior Ministry sort it out.’ So I notified the Interior Ministry. But the Interior Ministry replied that it could not enter a record confirming that my residence permit had ended, since the record of it being granted was held in another agency’s archive, and nothing could be entered into that archive.”

Alongside filing his court case, Yegor Karpenkov also submitted documents to register as a candidate for the State Duma in single-mandate constituency No. 214, and notified the constituency electoral commission of the ongoing litigation. Karpenkov’s interests in the Supreme Court will be represented by Vitaly Isakov, a lawyer and registered Yabloko candidate for the State Duma.

It should also be noted that on 5 August, the Yabloko party filed a lawsuit with the St. Petersburg City Court seeking to overturn the decision of the St. Petersburg Electoral Commission refusing to register the party’s list for the Legislative Assembly elections. The refusal to allow Yabloko to take part in the forthcoming Legislative Assembly elections, on spurious grounds, together with the Central Electoral Commission’s refusal to overturn that decision, is unlawful and politically motivated.