Press Release, 17.01.2020

State Duma deputies from the ruling United Russia Gadzhemet Safaraliyev, Yevgeny Marchenko and Valentin Subbot introduced amendments to the law on political parties to the lower house of the Russian parliament to liquidate the Yabloko party for “diminishing the authority of the state in the international arena”. The explanatory note to the bill gives only one example of the parties that, according to the authors of the bill, should be dissolved – the Yabloko party.

Also the deputies proposed that another reason for liquidation of a political party should be the receipt of more than 30 per cent of funding from foreign states, citizens, companies, firms with foreign participation, as well as anonymous persons. It should be noted that the present Russian laws stipulate that political parties with foreign funding must pay a fine of up to 300,000 roubles, but do not envisage dissolution of political parties. Money cannot be transferred by international public organisations, foreign individuals and stateless persons, as well as Russian legal entities with foreign participation.

As an example of “diminishing the authority of the state in the international arena”, the deputies cited in their explanatory note the political programme of the Yabloko party. “The Russian Political Party Yabloko sets as its goal a complete change of power in Russia – the Duma, the President, and the courts. All the  documents of the governing bodies of the Yabloko party for the recent years mention the desire to change the power and the state policy in Russia, including, encroachment on the state integrity of the Russian Federation by revising the entry of the Republic of Crimea into the Russian Federation,” the document runs.

The bill was submitted to the State Duma in the evening of 16 January, but was revoked by the authors already in the afternoon of 17 January, in order to “more clearly prescribe the mechanism for controlling the receipt of financing by political parties”.