Press Release, 9.09.2026

Photo: A Yabloko campaign billboard in Tomsk / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

The Tomsk Regional Court will hear a claim brought by LDPR seeking to revoke the registration of Yabloko’s list for the elections to the Tomsk Region Legislative Duma. The Tomsk Region is one of only two regions where Yabloko’s list is still taking part in regional elections.

The arguments in the claim almost entirely mirror those used against Yabloko’s federal list.

The first ground concerns the distribution of campaign material through social networks with restricted access. LDPR cites material on the mass-scale placement of Yabloko’s party-wide campaign content on such platforms. The claim gives figures for dozens of thousands of posts across hundreds of pages, with a potential reach running into the millions. The claimant argues that this was not a matter of isolated posts, but a systematic method of distributing campaign material. LDPR then extends this argument to the Tomsk campaign: according to the claimant, candidates on the regional list, after being nominated, also posted party-wide campaign material, including on resources with restricted access, meaning that the campaign effect generated in this way also served the interests of the list in the Tomsk Region Legislative Duma elections.

The second ground concerns alleged infringements of intellectual property law in the party-wide campaign material. LDPR lists the same material that featured in the case against the federal list: the line “Let There Always Be Sunshine”, the phrase “As Long As There’s No War”, data from the Levada Centre, the emblems of political parties, images of Dmitry Medvedev and Viktoria Bonya, and a still from the Soviet film “War and Peace”. The claim states that no evidence of the rights holders’ consent was provided. At the same time, LDPR does not allege that the Tomsk candidates themselves used these particular works. The claimant argues that the party-wide campaign material created using these phrases and pictures shaped a positive attitude towards Yabloko as a whole, and that the candidates on the regional list used the party’s shared name, emblem and slogans.

The third set of objections concerns financing. LDPR cites the valuation, used in the case against the federal list, of the cost of placing material in support of Yabloko on social networks and messaging apps. The claimant argues that the cost of this activity exceeds the five per cent threshold of the maximum size of the Tomsk list’s election fund — 3 million roubles. The claim further states that the party-wide campaign material was simultaneously used in the regional campaign as well, since it was distributed under the party’s shared name, emblem and slogans and was aimed at the same audience.

LDPR separately repeats its argument concerning donations received by the party from Russian counterparties that had themselves received funds from foreign states. The claimant states that, by the time the Tomsk list’s fund was formed, these donations had not been returned, and that the party had transferred 1,116,000 roubles of its own funds into the regional election fund. On this basis, LDPR seeks to link the financing of the Tomsk campaign to the party’s overall assets, within which the allegedly disputed donations were held.

In all three sets of objections, then, LDPR is attempting to extend arguments made against Yabloko’s party-wide campaign to the party’s regional list in the Tomsk Region.

Similar claims against Yabloko’s regional lists have previously been filed, using a comparable approach, in the Sverdlovsk and Kaliningrad regions.

It should be noted that Yabloko put forward lists of candidates for the legislative assemblies of eight regions. To date, only two of these lists remain in the elections — the party’s lists in the Novgorod and Tomsk regions.

In the Sverdlovsk, Kaliningrad and Pskov regions and in Karelia, Yabloko’s lists were removed by the courts, and the rulings have been appealed. In St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, the lists were not registered in the first place; the party has likewise appealed those refusals.