Press Release, 31.08.2026

Photo: Alexei Akimenko / Photo by Tatarstan Yabloko

On 31 August, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Bashkortostan has removed Alexei Akimenko, a Yabloko member and main rival of the Rodina party leader Zhuravlev, from the State Duma elections. He is the third Yabloko single-mandate candidate to be removed from the elections in a single day. The ruling will be appealed.

It should be noted that the claim seeking Akimenko’s removal from the elections was filed by Konstantin Shagimuratov, former head of the “A Just Russia — For Truth” party in Bashkortostan. He brought the proceedings with the support of the Rodina party, on whose claim the Supreme Court of Russia had earlier cancelled the registration of Yabloko’s list for the State Duma elections. Rodina Chairman Zhuravlev is Akimenko’s main rival in Neftekamsk Single-Mandate Constituency No. 6.

According to the claim, Akimenko allegedly administers the “Podslushano Agidel” community, where allegedly extremist materials — logos of social networks banned in Russia — had been posted. The proceedings began on 28 August and continued on 31 August; the claimant failed to attend either hearing.

Alexei Akimenko’s interests in court were represented by lawyers from the Civic Union – Ufa association. The case was heard by a judge of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Bashkortostan.

On the first day of the hearing, the claimant was unable to provide evidence that Akimenko administered the channel, and filed a motion to involve the Centre for Combating Extremism (Centre E) as an interested party. The prosecutor’s office did not support the request, and the court refused to grant the motion.

On Monday, the court again refused the claimant’s request to invite a specialist from Centre E to give an expert assessment, but permitted Roskomnadzor (RKN, the Federal Supervision Agency for Information Technologies and Communications) to carry out an examination to determine the owner of the channel on which the “extremist symbols” had allegedly been posted.

An RKN expert stated that the agency had no information about the post cited in the case, and stressed that the post could have been made by anyone, and that the screenshot of it in the case file proved nothing. At the same time, the RKN expert stated that it was impossible to either confirm or refute whether the community had been sold, but that it was possible to establish the time when administrative rights had been transferred — for which VKontakte network would need to be approached directly.

Alexei Akimenko explained in court that he had sold the public page in question long ago and submitted documents confirming the sale, including statements and screenshots from the Federal Tax Service’s “My Tax” app.

The judge, nonetheless, was interested in whether the candidate had transferred the proceeds of the sale to his election account.

The defence maintained that Akimenko had not personally created the content the judge described as extremist: thousands of posts had been made in the public page years earlier, in 2022; Akimenko had subsequently owned the page, but then sold it, all this was long ago. The claimant’s representative responded with the unsubstantiated assertion that the sale had been “falsified”.

The hearing also addressed the campaign material Akimenko was accused of posting on the banned platform Instagram. The judge stated that using any social network belonging to Meta*, which has been designated extremist, is unlawful in Russia. The RKN expert, for his part, stated that this was not the case; he supported neither the judge nor the claimant. Akimenko’s defence, meanwhile, stressed that the screenshots the claimant had submitted to the court, purportedly confirming that the Yabloko candidate had posted so-called campaign material, contained no evidence whatsoever, not even dates.

It should be noted that the representative of the Neftekamsk Territorial Electoral Commission (an interested party in the proceedings) attended the hearing via video link and spent the entire time talking to someone on the phone.

While the case materials were being examined, the judge addressed the courtroom (several dozen people had come to support Alexei in court): “Do you know what Meta* was doing in Russia? It was calling for the mass murder of citizens and servicemen, and inciting unrest. You should know what networks you are using.”

In closing submissions, both the TEC and the prosecutor’s office fully supported the claim brought by “A Just Russia — For Truth” party.

The judge spent less than ten minutes in the deliberation room and then ruled to grant the claim in full.

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

It should be noted that the Supreme Court of the Republic of Bashkortostan’s ruling marks the third removal of a Yabloko single-mandate candidate from the State Duma elections in a single day. Earlier, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan removed Yabloko candidate and medic Ayrat Gumerbaev following a claim by the electoral commission, and Tula Region Court removed the party’s regional branch leader and lawyer, Anton Paramonov.

Yabloko maintains that these court proceedings are 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 “claims” 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.

*Meta has been designated an extremist organisation and is banned in Russia.