‘The funds came from Russian citizens, not from abroad’: Yabloko’s lawyer answers a classified foreign-funding dossier used to try to knock the antiwar party off the ballot

According to data from Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring), the Yabloko party had received funding from abroad, a Central Election Commission (CEC) representative said. The representative spoke during a court hearing on a lawsuit the Rodina party filed seeking to remove Yabloko from the State Duma election.On Aug. 7, Rosfinmonitoring gave the commission a document stating that individuals on Yabloko’s federal candidate list had received foreign funding, the CEC representative said.Several dozen of the party’s counterparties had also received this funding, according to Rosfinmonitoring.The document is marked “for official use only,” and Yabloko representatives will be allowed to review it only after signing a nondisclosure agreement.Update: Yabloko has attributed the foreign funding data to the sale of foreign shares, which the law requires candidates to sell off ahead of elections, the Telegram channel Varlamov News reports. Yabloko lawyer Gadzhi Aliev said the funds did not come to the party itself from foreign individuals, but from Russian citizens who had received money from foreign sources.Of the parties registered by the CEC to run in the State Duma election, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, Yabloko is the only one that publicly calls for an end to hostilities in Ukraine.Rodina’s lawsuit against Yabloko also alleges copyright violations in campaign materials and accuses the party of “extremism” over its political stance.At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.