Russia's Supreme Court has ruled to bar Yabloko, the country's only remaining liberal, anti-war political party, from participating in the September 20 parliamentary elections. The ruling, delivered on Monday in Moscow, upheld a lawsuit brought by Rodina — a small pro-Kremlin nationalist party — which accused Yabloko of receiving illegal foreign funding and exceeding campaign finance limits. The decision strips voters opposed to Russia's war in Ukraine of their last viable ballot option in the election for the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament.

Yabloko — whose name is both a Russian acronym of its three founders' initials and the word for "apple" — was founded in 1993 and is the oldest liberal party in post-Soviet Russia. At its peak in 1995, the party held 45 seats in the Duma, but it has won no seats at all since 2003, and today holds just five seats across regional legislatures nationwide. Despite its marginal electoral presence, it had retained symbolic significance among Moscow's educated middle class, and its explicitly pacifist stance had become increasingly uncomfortable for the Kremlin as the war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year, grinds on. A recent poll placed Yabloko at roughly three to six percent support — below the five-percent threshold required to enter the Duma — though political analysts had begun speculating whether it might secure individual seats after the Central Electoral Commission surprised observers by approving 404 of the party's candidates.

Yabloko leader Nikolay Rybakov denied the foreign-funding allegations and vowed to appeal the decision within the five-day window set by the court. Addressing around a hundred supporters — mostly young people — who gathered outside the courthouse chanting "Shame! Shame!", he said the party's mission remained to "stop deaths and bring peace back." A separate witness account described a larger group of over 500 young people holding apples, the party's symbol, being warned by police that those who stayed could face forced military conscription. The party's chances of overturning the ruling on appeal are considered negligible given that Russia's Supreme Court almost never reverses its own decisions.

The ruling reflects a broader pattern of political exclusion that has accelerated since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. While parties such as the Communist Party formally position themselves as opposition, they support the war and routinely back the government in parliamentary votes. The ruling United Russia party holds 315 of the Duma's 450 seats. Most prominent critics of President Vladimir Putin have been jailed, driven into exile, or have died under disputed circumstances — most notably Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison colony in 2024. Yabloko's own prominent member Lev Shlosberg faces criminal charges for allegedly spreading false information about the Russian military. The party has received backing from exiled opposition figures including Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny's widow, both of whom are designated "extremists" under Russian law.

The exclusion of Yabloko matters beyond the party's modest polling numbers. This will be the first federal parliamentary election since the start of the war, and independent surveys indicate that a significant share of Russians favours peace negotiations with Kyiv. With Yabloko now off the ballot, those voters have no representative voice in the election, further cementing the Duma's role as an institution that reflects Kremlin priorities rather than the full range of public opinion.