Kremlin Removes Even Weak Opposition as Ukraine War Takes Toll

Russia’s Supreme Court has removed Yabloko, the country’s only registered anti-war party, from September’s parliamentary election. Despite the party having no seats in the State Duma, and only limited representation at the regional level, it still poses a threat to the Kremlin as Russian President Vladimir Putin and the ruling United Russia party’s ratings continue to slide.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. What happened to Yabloko On Aug. 10, the Supreme Court annulled Yabloko’s registration for Russia’s Sept. 18-20 parliamentary election. The ruling followed a lawsuit from the nationalist, pro-Kremlin Rodina party, which accused Yabloko of copyright violations, exceeding campaign-spending limits, and promoting positions that allegedly threatened Russia’s territorial integrity. The Central Election Commission had approved Yabloko’s candidate lists only a month earlier. Yabloko campaigned under slogans calling for a ceasefire, diplomacy, and an end to political repression. It was the only legally registered Russian party openly opposing the war. Its campaign began generating unusual attention online. Videos showed young Russians holding apples – “yabloko” means “apple” in Russian – when asked how they intended to vote. Several prominent exiled anti-Putin figures endorsed the party. On Aug. 6, Alexey Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said she believed it was “morally and politically right” to support Yabloko because of its anti-war position. Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza issued similar appeals. Other Topics of Interest Fires Erupt Across Russian-Occupied Crimea After Major Overnight Drone Attack Large fires were reported in occupied Crimea after a drone attack in the early hours of Aug. 12, with satellite imagery showing fires near Balaklava and a Russian military site. Yabloko chairman Nikolai Rybakov subsequently tried to distance the party from their support in court, apparently hoping to deny the authorities another justification for removing it. He said people were backing Yabloko “simply because they want to live in Russia and don’t want to get killed.” Hundreds of supporters gathered outside the Supreme Court during the hearing, demonstrating an unusual public display of dissent in wartime Russia. From Yavlinsky to Navalny Yabloko emerged in 1993, two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the electoral bloc of Grigory Yavlinsky, Yury Boldyrev and Vladimir Lukin. Their surnames supplied the first three letters of its name. Yavlinsky remains central to the party today as chairman of its Federal Political Committee. Yabloko was once a significant parliamentary liberal force but lost its national representation as Putin tightened his control over Russian politics in the 2000s. Its history also overlaps with that of several other prominent Putin opponents. Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated near the Kremlin in 2015, was never a Yabloko member. He led the rival Union of Right Forces, or SPS, which attempted to form an alliance with Yabloko. The two liberal parties repeatedly failed to unite, including during coalition talks ahead of the 2003 parliamentary election. Their rivalry became an early example of the Russian liberal opposition’s remarkable ability to fight itself while the authoritarian system consolidated around it. Alexei Navalny, whose death in an Arctic penal colony in 2024 is believed to be another Kremlin-ordered murder, also began his political career in Yabloko. While the party expelled him in 2007, officially over his nationalist activities, Navalny argued that the real reason was his criticism of Yavlinsky and the party leadership, which he accused of suppressing internal opposition and refusing to cooperate with other democratic forces. Navalnaya’s current support for Yabloko therefore carries a certain historical irony, demonstrating how little official political choice remains in Russia. Genuine repression, genuine reasons for skepticism The pressure on Yabloko is real. Deputy party chairman Maxim Kruglov was sentenced in June to seven years in prison for social-media posts about civilian deaths in Bucha, Mariupol and elsewhere in Ukraine. Amnesty International described his conviction as punishment for peacefully opposing Russia’s aggression. Boris Vishnevsky, another deputy chairman, was designated a “foreign agent” and forced to leave the St. Petersburg legislature. Lev Shlosberg faces several criminal cases and could receive up to 10 years in prison. While these measures are not normally applied to completely obedient Kremlin puppets, Russia’s political party system is tightly managed. Political parties may formally exist, but the presidential administration decides which organizations are allowed meaningful access to national politics and how much opposition they may display. A Kyiv Post source familiar with Russia’s political system described State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin as one of the principal gatekeepers for parties seeking to participate in national elections or have access to Putin. In October 2023, Yavlinsky spent three days in quarantine before receiving a 90-minute meeting with Putin, during which he advocated a ceasefire, though in vain. Yabloko’s record on Ukraine – just like that of most Russian anti-Putin activists, alive or dead, including Navalny whose stance on Crimea only shifted after the full-scale war – also deserves scrutiny. In a 2024 interview with Putin’s goddaughter and sham opposition, Ksenia Sobchak, Shlosberg argued that Ukraine could not be described as ‘a victim’ because it was successfully fighting back. The controversy surrounding his remarks encapsulated the Russian opposition’s ambiguous attitude toward Ukraine. Parts of the Russian liberal opposition discuss the war primarily as a tragedy that must be stopped or as one man’s folly. In 2022, Former Deputy Energy Minister of the Russian Federation and Navalny’s associate Vladimir Milov described as “Putin shot himself not just in the foot, but also some vital organs.” Seldom is it viewed as an act of Russian imperial aggression that requires withdrawal, accountability and justice for Ukraine. Why remove Yabloko now? The crackdown matters because Russia’s war against Ukraine is taking an increasingly visible toll on Russian society. In July, Russia’s state-linked Public Opinion Foundation recorded Putin’s sharpest weekly approval decline since the 2022 mobilization. His approval fell from 71% to 66%, while the state-run VTsIOM recorded a decline from 70.4% in mid-June to 65.1%. Fuel shortages, economic anxiety, Ukrainian strikes inside Russia, and the war’s growing intrusion into daily life have made it more difficult for Russians to remain politically detached. Levada Center polling subsequently found that support for the Russian military’s actions in Ukraine had fallen to 66%, its lowest level since the full-scale invasion began. Support for Putin’s United Russia has also weakened. VTsIOM placed the party at 32.1% in its latest survey, down 1.4 percentage points in one week and 3.4 points from its June peak. Earlier in July, FOM recorded a three-point weekly fall to 33% – its lowest figure for the ruling party since the full-scale invasion began. By comparison, United Russia officially received 49.82% of the party-list vote in 2021, although polling figures and election results are not directly equivalent. Even these figures should be treated cautiously. Russian anti-war activist Daniil Chebykin previously told Kyiv Post that polling in an authoritarian state is distorted by fear, selective participation and survey methods that favor Kremlin-friendly respondents. VTsIOM now conducts half of its political interviews by telephone and half through an in-person “route sample,” in which pollsters visit people at their homes. “The respondent understands that the people asking the questions have his home address and other information,” Chebykin said. “Of course, he will not say: ‘No, I am against Putin. I am against the war.’” Government critics may refuse to participate or provide the answer they consider safest. In-person polling may also disproportionately reach pensioners and habitual state-television viewers. The real level of dissatisfaction could therefore be greater than the official numbers indicate. Analyst Nikolay Petrov told the Associated Press that the Kremlin may initially have allowed Yabloko to run as an outlet for public frustration, expecting its traditionally poor result to demonstrate that anti-war Russians constituted an insignificant minority. Instead, the campaign began attracting attention. Navalnaya had warned of precisely this problem when she launched her campaign against United Russia in September 2025. Putin, she said, would use the election to claim that he was Russia and that all Russians supported him and his party, a statement increasingly challenged by reality.