Russia strikes three more Yabloko candidates from ballot ahead of parliamentary vote

Russian courts disqualified three candidates from the Yabloko party's single-mandate district races in a single day, adding to a string of setbacks for the party ahead of September's parliamentary elections.

In Tatarstan, the republic's Supreme Court removed candidate Airat Gumerbayev after the local election commission filed suit over his ownership of foreign securities. In the Tula region, a regional court disqualified Anton Paramonov, who heads Yabloko's local branch, after a rival candidate from the Pensioners' Party, Svetlana Bobrovskaya, brought a similar complaint concerning foreign securities holdings.

Separately, Bashkortostan's Supreme Court canceled the registration of Alexey Akimenko, who had been accused of administering an online community called "Podslushano Agidel." The court claimed the group hosted "extremist materials," a designation it applied to logos of social networks that are banned in Russia. Akimenko had been running in the same district as Rodina party chairman Alexey Zhuravlev.

Yabloko said it plans to appeal all three rulings.

Yabloko is currently the only party contesting Russia's upcoming parliamentary elections on an antiwar platform. Earlier setbacks include the Russian Supreme Court's August 10 decision to strike the party's federal candidate list from the ballot entirely, followed by the removal of its regional lists in the Pskov, Kaliningrad, and Sverdlovsk regions, as well as in Karelia.

According to the party's website, Yabloko has put forward 125 candidates for single-mandate districts across 51 regions of Russia.