Press Release, 15.09.2026

Photo: A session of the Constitutional Court / Photo by Yevgeny Pavlenko, Kommersant

The Yabloko party has filed a complaint with Russia’s Constitutional Court over the removal of the party’s federal list from the State Duma elections.

Yabloko is challenging the constitutionality of a number of provisions of the laws “On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights” and “On the Election of Deputies of the State Duma,” specifically in the sense given to them by the law enforcement practice that has developed around them.

On 10 August, Russia’s Supreme Court annulled the registration of Yabloko’s federal list of candidates. On 17 August, the Supreme Court’s Appeals Panel upheld this ruling. On 3 September, the party was refused referral of its supervisory complaint for consideration by the Presidium of the Supreme Court.

The grounds for removing the list were the court’s findings of violations of intellectual property legislation in the conduct of campaign materials, the alleged use of funds outside the electoral fund, and the receipt of donations from individuals who had received funding from foreign sources.

In its complaint to the Constitutional Court, Yabloko identifies seven interconnected elements of the law enforcement interpretation that has taken shape, which the party considers unconstitutional:

1. Any informational material on the website of a political party taking part in the elections can be classified as campaign material, regardless of the purpose for which it was created.
2. Archival materials published long before the start of an election campaign can be classified as campaigning in the current election.
3. Even minor use of an item of intellectual property can serve as grounds for removing a list, regardless of its scale or significance to the informational material in question.
4. In examining electoral disputes, it may not be taken into account whether an item is protected by copyright, whether an exclusive right to it is in force, or whether its free use is permitted.
5. Legal provisions place responsibility on political parties for the actions of citizens who campaign independently and in their own interest.
6. Assumptions about the cost of a given activity, without any proven actual expenditure of funds, are considered sufficient grounds for concluding that funds were used outside the electoral fund.
7. The past receipt of funds from a foreign source by a Russian citizen or organisation is treated as grounds for deeming their donation to the party unlawful, and for the subsequent removal of the list from elections.

In Yabloko’s view, this practice turns the annulment of a candidate list’s registration from an exceptional measure of liability for a proven, substantial violation into a tool of unfair political competition.

The party points out that the approach that has taken shape makes it possible, in effect, to remove virtually any list of candidates, or any individual candidate, from the elections — over the actions of third parties, archival publications, assumptions about the use of funds, and circumstances the party had no way of controlling.

Yabloko believes that this law enforcement interpretation contradicts the constitutional principles of political diversity and multi-party democracy, freedom of speech and of association, equality before the law and the courts, legal certainty, and the proportionality of restrictions on electoral rights.

The party is asking the Constitutional Court to declare the challenged provisions of electoral legislation inconsistent with the Constitution, in the sense given to them by law enforcement practice, and to rule that the decisions in the case concerning the removal of Yabloko’s federal list are subject to review.