One bad apple Meduza explains why the Kremlin is cracking down on Russia’s Yabloko party and its floundering campaign for peace
Ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections, the Kremlin is cracking down on the liberal party Yabloko, which opposes the war in Ukraine. Just this month, authorities arrested one of its leaders, spread rumors about another, and placed a third under house arrest. At the same time, Yabloko’s approval rating only hovers around 3–4 percent, and the party doesn’t currently hold any seats in the parliament. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev spoke with Kremlin insiders about why the Russian authorities are so worried about Yabloko and how Moscow plans to manage the 2026 State Duma elections.
‘For peace and freedom’
Earlier this month, Russian security forces arrested Maxim Kruglov, a deputy chairman of the Yabloko party and a former Moscow City Duma deputy. The next day, a Moscow court found him guilty of spreading “fake news” about the army and remanded him in pre-trial detention until November 29.
Kruglov was charged over two posts he shared on social media: one, on April 2, 2022, cited United Nations data on the number of Ukrainian civilians killed since the start of the full-scale war; the other, posted the following day, condemned Russian atrocities in Bucha. On October 17, Kruglov was added to Russia’s list of “terrorists and extremists.”
Kruglov isn’t the only prominent Yabloko member to find himself in the spotlight this month. Shortly after his arrest, pro-government Telegram channels began circulating leaked video footage that purportedly shows Yabloko chairman Nikolai Rybakov with his alleged romantic partner, Ukrainian fashion designer Alen Enumba. (Ryabkov has not commented on their relationship.)
Then, on October 10, another Yabloko deputy chairman, Lev Shlosberg, was transferred to house arrest to await trial on felony charges of “repeatedly discrediting” the Russian army. Meanwhile, prosecutors have demanded that a book by Boris Vishnevsky, a former Yabloko representative in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, be declared an “extremist” work.
These developments around one of Russia’s oldest political parties come a year before the next State Duma elections, scheduled for September 2026. Yabloko, whose slogan is “For Peace and Freedom,” holds what’s known as Duma privilege: it can nominate candidates without collecting supporting signatures first.
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But Yabloko’s odds in 2026 aren’t looking good. A political consultant working with the Kremlin’s domestic policy bloc and a source close to the Putin administration told Meduza that Putin’s domestic policy czar, Sergey Kiriyenko, is planning an “ultra-conservative” campaign strategy. Only the parties currently represented in parliament should win seats, and United Russia’s goal is to secure 60–65 percent of the vote.
Another source close to the administration said the domestic policy team has yet to finalize the campaign’s “contours.” United Russia’s main talking points and the list of issues that systemic opposition parties will be barred from addressing will be determined later, he said.
‘The risk factor is obvious’
“The main uncertainty right now is whether the war will still be ongoing by the time of the election,” one source close to the Putin administration told Meduza. “For now, we’re assuming the fighting will continue. But that could change. Things could turn in the opposite direction very quickly, that’s why no final decisions have been made [about the campaign] yet.”
A political strategist who works with the Kremlin’s domestic policy team agrees. In an already unstable environment, he said, Yabloko “creates risks” for the Kremlin — making it likely that the party will be pushed out of the race altogether.
“Yabloko has a clear position on issues that are sensitive for the authorities — first and foremost, the war,” the strategist told Meduza. “People are tired of it, and if [Yabloko] openly campaigns on peace, that will inevitably attract voters. Whether that would be enough [to win seats in the Duma] is impossible to predict. But the risk factor is obvious.”
According to pollsters, a majority of Russians support peace talks and an end to the fighting. There are no recent polls on Yabloko’s own popularity, but earlier surveys show 3–4 percent support for the party. The strategist told Meduza that with slogans that resonate with the public, the party could realistically boost its numbers enough to cross the five percent threshold needed to win parliamentary seats.
He added that officials in the Kremlin’s political bloc also worry Yabloko could become a “rallying point” for moderate opposition figures who remain in Russia and could serve as the base for a new coalition. “For instance, [Yabloko could] nominate Boris Nadezhdin or [opposition politician Yekaterina] Duntsova. Yabloko has never been eager to form coalitions, but anything is possible. The long lines to support Nadezhdin showed that there’s public interest in politicians with that kind of message,” the strategist said.
Another consultant who worked with the Kremlin during the 2024 presidential campaign added that Nadezhdin himself remains a sore spot for the political bloc: “They still remember those lines of people waiting to sign for him — it was a real headache. The images didn’t exactly fit with the official narrative of ‘national unity.’”
Authorities are also mindful of the potential for “protest voting” — the idea of casting a ballot for any party other than United Russia, which Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of opposition figure Alexey Navalny, has called for. A source close to Putin’s administration and a Kremlin-connected strategist both told Meduza that officials are less concerned about Navalnaya’s appeals than about broader public frustration. Many voters, they said, might back Yabloko not out of loyalty to the party but to express anger over the economy — a sentiment likely to grow if the war drags on.
For that reason, the strategist who works with the Putin administration believes Yabloko could be barred from the parliamentary race despite its “Duma privilege.” “There are plenty of pretexts for rejecting a party list — supposedly the paperwork was filed incorrectly, or the documents were drawn up the wrong way, or the [party congress] was held improperly. Even parliamentary parties get their lists removed in regional elections if they include candidates disliked by local officials. The same could easily happen to Yabloko,” he said.
For now, the Kremlin’s focus is on “shaping [public] opinion,” the strategist concluded — by arresting some of Yabloko’s prominent members and stirring up scandals around others.
Story by Andrey Pertsev