Russia’s token antiwar party, Yabloko, has spent more than two decades mastering the art of political survival under President Vladimir Putin.
What’s striking about Yabloko’s ouster from the election is that the party never even planned to enter parliament. A collection of sanctioned parties including Yabloko was allowed to push harmless policy ideas, but never allowed to cross the line into actual dissent. “Yabloko is the only party on the ballot that presents an alternative to the current government, compared to the other 10 parties. When Putin came to power in 2000, Yabloko won a spot in a new political system that was designed to sideline real rivals but permitted—and at times even encouraged—a handful of contenders willing to uphold a facade of fair elections while ultimately toeing the government line.
Because there’s no difference between the parties currently on the ballot.
The real reason, according to Yabloko leaders and political analysts, is an unusual surge in the party’s support against the backdrop of growing disillusionment with the war in Ukraine it has vocally opposed. Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter now living abroad, said the authorities’ own internal polling showed that Yabloko had become a vessel for antiwar sentiment and thus a threat. They understood, he said, that “the elections would have been a referendum between war and peace. Its goal—elements of which were outlined in a 43-word program titled “For Peace and Freedom!”—was simply to influence the discourse enough to expedite an end to the bloodshed in Ukraine, Rybakov said. Absolutely none,” Rybakov said in an interview. Kremlin spin doctors dubbed this system “managed democracy”—a form of tightly controlled politics that maintains an illusion of competition. “If things start to go badly with the ruling party and with the status quo in general, and such parties get genuine electoral support, they may start to morph into something quite different,” said political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann.
