All 83 candidates from Yabloko, the only registered party in Russia openly opposed to the war, were barred from running in the St. Petersburg municipal elections, independent news outlet Bumaga reported on Monday.
Yabloko’s spokesman Dmitry Anisimov told journalists that the party would appeal the authorities’ decision in court. Bumaga reported last week that Yabloko candidates had received rejection notices as the party had failed to give them their official endorsement, which its officials said was not true.
A number of candidates from pro-war parties have also been barred from running. A source from Russia’s Communist Party told Bumaga that 244 out of its 427 candidates were blocked from registering in the elections. The Communist Party believes an additional 50 candidates will be denied registration, though a decision has not yet been made.
Other candidates said they had failed to submit their documents in time because of overly long lines at the election committee office, which the nationalist political group Society.Future claimed were full of “fake candidates”.
Opposition candidates running in Russian elections are often forced to drop out, barred from running or face imprisonment. Yabloko, founded in 1993 and currently campaigning under the slogan “For Peace and Freedom”, is a registered liberal political party that hasn’t been represented in the lower house of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, since 2007 and only has 11 seats in regional parliaments as of 2024.
St. Petersburg residents are due to go to the polls on 6–8 September to elect the city’s next governor and municipal deputies. The election campaign has been marred by controversy, with an 82-year-old anti-war candidate being forced to drop out of the race earlier in July after failing to collect 76,000 signatures required to register her candidacy — an election rule that her supporters said was “drawn up in such a way as to not allow a single independent candidate”.