Putin shuts down another voice against him, through the court bans the anti-war party from participating in the upcoming elections

Russia's Supreme Court has banned the liberal Yabloko party from participating in next month's parliamentary elections, blocking the only group calling for an end to Moscow's war against Ukraine.

The August 10 ruling, at a hearing held outside a courthouse with hundreds of mostly young Russians, dashed hopes that opponents of the war would have a voice in the September 18-20 elections.

This development highlighted the extent of the Kremlin's intolerance of dissent, which has become even more severe since President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Central Election Commission unexpectedly registered Yabloko late last month for the first elections to the State Duma, the 450-seat lower house of parliament, since the start of the general war.

The nationalist Rodina party filed a lawsuit last week seeking to cancel Yabloko's registration, citing a number of violations, including improper funding, copyright infringement, and extremism.

At the hearing, Yabloko chairman Nikolai Rybakov rejected the accusations and said the party defends the interests of the majority, "because preserving human lives is in the interests of the majority of Russian citizens."

Rybakov said Yablok would do everything it could to make Russia a “prosperous democratic state.” The party announced it would appeal, saying “let’s not despair.”

Court decisions in high-profile cases are believed to be made by or closely coordinated with the Kremlin, and the Supreme Court judge who heard the lawsuit against Yabloko, Vyacheslav Kirillov, has handed down other harsh rulings, such as the decision to label prominent human rights group Memorial as “extremist” earlier this year.

But analysts suggest that the events surrounding Yabloko, which was initially registered and then excluded from the vote, may reflect internal strife between interest groups within the Russian elite: roughly, security officials and other hawks whose instinct is to suppress dissent, especially opposition to the war, and those who hope it will end soon.

Polls show that most Russians want negotiations to end the war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers. Recent Ukrainian attacks on oil and gas infrastructure and other targets, sometimes far from the Ukrainian border, have caused civilian casualties and brought the war closer to many citizens.

Putin has rejected Ukrainian and American calls for a ceasefire that would lift the front lines, demanding instead that Ukraine hand over territory that Russia has failed to capture in battle. He has repeatedly vowed to achieve his goals through diplomacy or force.

Yabloko emerged in the 1990s and was a significant force in the Duma. But Putin slowed Russia's democratic progress after he first became president in 2000, and the party has not won a single seat in elections since 2003, which have been increasingly marred by evidence of fraud in favor of the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party.

The GeoPost