Press Release, 31.08.2026

Photo: Anton Paramonov / Photo by Tula Yabloko

On 31 August, the Tula Region Court has granted a claim filed by Svetlana Bobrovskaya, deputy head teacher at Educational Centre No. 41, seeking the cancellation of the registration of Yabloko candidate Anton Paramonov, who heads the party’s Tula branch, in the State Duma elections.

Bobrovskaya is a member of the Party of Pensioners and is a single-mandate candidate in the same Tula Single-Mandate Constituency No. 181 as Anton Paramonov.

In her claim, the deputy head teacher stated that the Yabloko candidate held foreign securities of which he had failed to dispose in time.

Paramonov, a qualified lawyer, represented himself in court. He stated that he had not only made no secret of the “disputed financial instrument”, but had also duly notified the electoral commission of his attempt to dispose of it.

In his objections to the claim, Anton Paramonov stated that the foreign economic asset he was accused of holding was a zero-value depositary receipt left over after the redomiciliation (change of corporate jurisdiction) of Rusagro shares.

The candidate had attempted to sell this depositary receipt (this, too, is in the case file), but the bank had stated that this was impossible. Nor could the receipt’s holder dispose of it on his own.

It should be emphasised that the Tula Region Electoral Commission had registered Paramonov as a candidate while in possession of all this information, yet has now gone back on its own decision: Deputy Chair Esina, representing the Commission in court, supported Bobrovskaya’s claim.

Anton Paramonov also recalled the case of his Yabloko colleague Anton Kostik from St. Petersburg: on 24 August, the court had ruled in his favour and refused to cancel his registration as a candidate when considering an identical complaint about securities from a Territorial Electoral Commission.

The case was heard by a judge of Tula Region Court, who ruled to grant Svetlana Bobrovskaya’s claim (Bobrovskaya herself did not attend the hearing at all).

The court’s ruling will shortly be appealed to the appellate instance.

It should be noted that, a few hours earlier in Kazan, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan had removed Yabloko candidate Ayrat Gumerbaev from the elections following a claim by the electoral commission — a claim likewise concerning securities of which the commission had known in advance, and of the candidate’s inability to dispose of them.

Yabloko maintains that these court proceedings are nothing other than a politically motivated campaign, part of a nationwide effort to bar the party’s candidates from taking part in the elections. Claims filed in different regions — whether the “grievances” concern single-mandate candidates or the party’s lists — are frequently identical to one another; claimants often fail to attend hearings, and their representatives do not even set out their position in any detail, evidently counting in advance on an obvious outcome to the proceedings.