A judge in the Sverdlovsk region has disqualified the liberal Yabloko party’s list of candidates from the upcoming regional assembly elections, the court said Friday.
The regional ban follows Russia’s Supreme Court ruling last week to reject Yabloko’s final appeal against a nationwide ban barring its candidate list from the State Duma elections next month.
The Sverdlovsk Regional Court ruled in favor of a lawsuit filed by the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), which accused Yabloko of a range of violations that include those cited in the Supreme Court ruling.
LDPR claimed Yabloko committed copyright infringement, overspent its funds and shared content on banned platforms like Instagram and Facebook. Konstantin Kiselyov, who leads Yabloko’s Sverdlovsk region list of candidates, argued that the same accusations can be leveled against the other parties running in the elections, including LDPR.
“Each party and their leaders are on these banned social networks. I come across official state agencies there, and they can’t live without them,” Kommersant quoted Kiselyov as saying in court.
Yaroslav Shcherbakov, another Yabloko member in the Sverdlovsk region, also accused LDPR of openly calling for the elimination of its political competitor.
Yabloko’s Yekaterinburg branch said it would appeal the ruling.
The Sverdlovsk region is the fifth in Russia where Yabloko has had its list of candidates barred from running in the regional assembly races in September, either through court rulings or rejections by local election commissions.
Yabloko faces the risk of being stripped of its official registration due to legal requirements to field candidates in at least 20% of regional assembly elections or 10% of gubernatorial races every seven years, according to exiled journalist Farida Rustamova.
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