Press Release, 11.09.2026

Photo: List leaders — Konstantin Kiselyov, Tatyana Gorshkaleva, and Alexei Kholodarev

The Second Court of Appeal of General Jurisdiction in St. Petersburg has upheld the ruling of the Sverdlovsk Regional Court annulling the registration of Yabloko’s list for the elections of deputies to the Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly.

On 28 August, the Sverdlovsk Regional Court granted the claim brought by the regional branch of the LDPR and annulled the registration of Yabloko’s list in the single constituency.

Yabloko appealed against the ruling, arguing that the court of first instance had wrongly extended the findings of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the party’s federal list to a separate regional election campaign.

In its appeal, the party pointed out that the Supreme Court had examined the circumstances of the federal elections: materials from the federal campaign, the federal election fund, and actions connected with the State Duma elections. Questions of campaign funding in the Sverdlovsk Region, the regional branch’s publications, and the activities of the candidates on the Sverdlovsk list had not been the subject of that case.

Moreover, some of the publications, that the LDPR had cited in its claim against the Sverdlovsk list of Yabloko, had appeared on 11–13 August — after the Supreme Court’s ruling of 10 August. The party therefore argued that the circumstances of their posting could not, in principle, have been established by that ruling.

Yabloko also insisted that the claimant had failed to provide evidence of any spending beyond the regional election fund. In the party’s view, annulling the registration required proof not of the estimated cost of the publications, but of actual use of funds to achieve a result specifically in the Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly elections, and of the statutory threshold being exceeded.

The appeal separately disputed the classification of the publications as campaign advertising. Yabloko noted that merely mentioning the party or its list did not mean that the material had been commissioned by the electoral association and was intended to encourage voters to vote for it.

The party also put forward arguments concerning the copyright-related allegations. It pointed out, in particular, that the rights holder of the song “Let There Always Be Sunshine” had consented to its use by the party and by Grigory Yavlinsky, and that the Levada Centre had authorised the use of its published analytical materials and graphics.

A further ground of appeal was a violation of the rules on territorial jurisdiction. Yabloko’s representative argued that the defendant in the case was the federal party, registered in Moscow, and that the claim should therefore, in his view, have been heard by the Moscow City Court.

The Second Court of Appeal left the ruling of the Sverdlovsk Regional Court unchanged.

Yabloko’s candidates registered in the 18 single-mandate constituencies, however, continue to take part in the Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly elections.

This week, six single-mandate Yabloko candidates were detained in Yekaterinburg. Alexander Kudelkin was arrested for ten days, while Konstantin Kiselyov, a deputy of the Yekaterinburg City Duma, and Shana Ogney were each fined 2,000 roubles. These rulings are being appealed, have not yet entered into legal force, and therefore do not affect the candidates’ participation in the election campaign.