Press Release, 22.08.2025

Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

In total, 172 Yabloko party candidates are participating in 39 electoral campaigns in 19 regions of the country under the unified party slogan “For Peace and Freedom! For the Ceasefire agreement!”.

This year Yabloko nominated 270 candidates in 27 regions of the Russian Federation, including a candidate for Governor of the Novgorod Region and candidates for deputies in two legislative bodies of the Russian Federation subjects (the Kurgan and Chelyabinsk regions). The majority of candidates had to provide signatures (either of voters or municipal deputies) to electoral commissions in support of their nomination.

Following registration results, Yabloko representatives will participate in six campaigns for deputy elections in the capitals of six Russian reiogns – Kaluga, Kostroma, Oryol, Pskov, Tomsk and Cheboksary.

Electoral campaigns with participation of Yabloko will also take place in municipalities of the Vologda, Kaliningrad, Moscow, Murmansk, Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Pskov, Rostov, Ryazan, Chelyabinsk regions, as well as Bashkortostan, Dagestan and Karelia.

In three regions of the country, 13 party candidates lists have been registered: one for municipal elections in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, one for elections to the Tomsk City Council and 11 for municipal elections in the Pskov Region.

Yabloko Party Chairman Nikolai Rybakov notes, “For the fourth year already, our candidates from different regions of the country are participating in elections under the slogan ‘For Peace!’. A vote for our party is a vote to stop people dying, to end destruction and repression, for a future without fear. Without this, no positive changes in the country are possible – neither at federal, nor regional, nor local level”.

Head of the Yabloko Analytical Centre Ivan Bolshakov says, “The electoral campaign increasingly less resembles a competition between political alternatives. This is especially noticeable in gubernatorial elections, which long ago lost competitiveness, but still remained a way of gaining legitimacy. Now they have turned into formal registration of decisions made in the Kremlin. Barriers to parliamentary elections are becoming increasingly difficult to overcome, with continued removal of parties and candidates who don’t fit into the modern political consensus.

Deliberately impossible conditions both in terms of number of [voters’ or municipal deputies’] signatures [in support of registration of candidates] and technical completion of signature sheets make participation in elections practically impossible for opposition parties not represented in the State Duma. Meanwhile, pseudo-parties that exist to demonstrate a kind of competition, as usual, face no problems. Under these conditions, the participation of 172 Yabloko candidates in the campaign is an act of civic courage and an attempt to restore meaning to elections.”