‘I’ll Break Your Head’: Russian Anti-War Candidate Gets Death Threats Ahead of Elections

A Russian anti-war opposition candidate and deputy head of the Yabloko party’s Saratov branch says he and his family have received death threats and pressure to withdraw from September’s State Duma elections.Kirill Rumyantsev said the threats began on Aug. 6 and were delivered by phone and through messaging apps, according to The Moscow Times, which reported on the case on Monday, Aug. 10.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.Rumyantsev published screenshots of several threatening messages on his Telegram channel and said he had filed a police report.“You will say something bad about United Russia again, I’ll break your head... I can also say hello to your mother... I’ll kill you,” one message said, according to the politician.Rumyantsev said he had no intention of withdrawing his candidacy.According to Rumyantsev, another unidentified caller demanded that he quit the election before threatening him and his family, including with the possibility of planting drugs on him.The politician said he had no enemies or personal conflicts that could explain the threats and argued that his political activity should not be used to justify intimidation.“These methods of pressure are unacceptable in a civilized society,” Rumyantsev said, calling for those who disagree with his political position to challenge him in public debates instead.He also described the threats as a consequence of what he called an increasingly hostile attitude toward dissent and criticism of the Russian authorities. Other Topics of Interest Russia’s Missile Machine Is Running Hot – Ukraine May Not Get a Break, HUR Says Russia could reduce the number of missiles fired at individual targets but is unlikely to halt its strikes, Major General Vadym Skibitsky told RBC-Ukraine. The threats came as Yabloko faces growing political pressure ahead of Russia’s September parliamentary elections.The party was officially cleared to participate in the elections last week. Leaders of several other Russian political parties, including A Just Russia, the Communist Party and the Liberal Democratic Party, have publicly criticized Yabloko.Rodina party leader Alexei Zhuravlyov has gone further, filing a lawsuit with Russia’s Supreme Court seeking to overturn Yabloko’s admission to the elections. He has called its members “national traitors” and accused the party of receiving funding from former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.Rodina has also accused Yabloko of campaign-financing violations, supporting Russia’s banned “LGBT movement” and using copyrighted material without authorization.At the same time, prominent opposition figures living abroad, including Yulia Navalnaya, Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza, have urged Russians to vote for Yabloko.Yabloko leader Nikolai Rybakov has sought to distance the party from those appeals, saying it has no ties to organizations declared “undesirable” in Russia, receives no foreign funding and does not coordinate with opposition figures living abroad.Yabloko is one of Russia’s few established political parties to have openly opposed the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The party has called for an immediate ceasefire and a negotiated end to the war, while criticizing Russia’s crackdown on political dissent and anti-war activism.Rumyantsev himself has previously faced pressure over anti-war activism. In 2022, he was detained during a solo anti-war picket in Saratov, and the local Yabloko branch said he was later threatened with expulsion from a law academy over his protest.Rumyantsev is running for the State Duma in Saratov’s Balashov single-member constituency. Yabloko’s Saratov branch nominated him as its candidate for the constituency in June 2026. Kyiv Post is Ukraine’s first and oldest English news organization, reporting since 1995. Its international reach – 97% of readers are outside of Ukraine – make it truly Ukraine’s global voice.