LDPR opponent had tried to have his registration annulled

Press Release, 5.08.2026

Photo: Dmitry Khorzov / Photo from his Telegram channel

On 5 August, the St. Petersburg City Court dismissed a claim brought by LDPR candidate Vladimir Osmolovsky, who had sought to challenge the registration of Yabloko member Dmitry Khorzov as a candidate in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly election (for the Moskovsky district of St. Petersburg).

Khorzov’s interests in court were represented by lawyer Alexander Kobrinsky, deputy head of Yabloko’s St. Petersburg regional branch. He noted that his arguments had been supported by the prosecution. The court agreed: all of Khorzov’s documents had been correctly drawn up, and he was a lawfully registered candidate.

Yabloko believes that Osmolovsky, a proxy candidate, was not acting on his own initiative, which makes this Yabloko victory all the more significant, as it shows to would-be political strategists working through others that their use of administrative resources has its limits.

It should be noted that on 3 August, Dmitry Khorzov, a candidate for the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, received notice from the city court that his LDPR opponent wished to have his registration in the election annulled. Previously, the territorial electoral commission had “lost” the documents nominating Khorzov. He had proved his case by producing video footage of himself submitting a complete and correct set of documents, after which the missing documents were quickly found. Vladimir Osmolovsky, who had previously stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the New People party in 2024 — spending almost a million roubles on his campaign and failing to win even 750 votes — then filed the claim with the court. All the complaints it contained amounted to nothing more than wordplay; the claim contained no genuine grounds for calling the lawfulness of Dmitry Khorzov’s nomination into question.