Opposition candidates in Russia faced restrictions on their participation in the elections for the State Duma and regional assemblies scheduled for September 18-20. Twenty-nine candidates from the liberal Yabloko party were removed from the State Duma race, while the nominations of at least eight Communist Party candidates were also annulled.
The nomination of Iya Boronina, a politician in the Republic of Udmurtia, was annulled because she used George Thorogood & The Destroyers’ song "Bad to the Bone" in campaign videos. Udmurtia’s highest court ruled that the use violated intellectual property law.
The decision followed an application by a candidate from A Just Russia, which is contesting the elections after Yabloko. The application argued that the song’s license could be purchased only in U.S. dollars and that the payment could not be made from Boronina’s campaign account.
Boronina said the case had been heard without her participation and that she had not been informed of the date or time of the hearing. Her subsequent appeal was also rejected.
Yabloko’s presence in the elections narrows
Yabloko lost a total of 29 candidates from the State Duma race, including the heads of four regional branches. The party can still field candidates in single-member constituencies, but said on Thursday that 106 of its candidates remained in the race across 45 constituencies. The figure was 135 at the beginning of the campaign.
The party was also removed last month from the nationwide party-list elections. Half of the 450 seats in Russia’s State Duma are allocated through lists of parties that receive at least 5 percent of the vote. The remaining 225 seats are distributed in single-member constituencies.
Yabloko candidates will be able to compete in only one of the 39 regional legislative elections. Party lists were annulled by courts in seven regions. In the latest decision, issued in the Siberian Tomsk region, campaign spending, copyright violations and the use of banned social media platforms were cited as grounds.
Other grounds cited for annulling Yabloko candidates’ nominations included old social media posts mentioning the late Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, photographs of Navalny and references to projects linked to him. Owning shares on foreign stock exchanges, a post containing a caricature of Adolf Hitler and errors in registration documents were also cited as grounds for canceling nominations.
Communist Party candidates also removed from elections
Parties in the "systemic opposition," which declare themselves opposed to the Kremlin but are allowed to operate within the political system, also faced pressure during the election process. The nominations of at least eight Communist Party candidates for the State Duma or regional assemblies were annulled.
The removal of Communist Party candidate Nikolay Bondarenko from the race became one of the most widely discussed election issues on Russian social media last week. Bondarenko was barred from the elections over an old social media post featuring a photograph of Navalny, after footage of Bondarenko from a televised debate was widely shared.
Bondarenko, who previously served as a lawmaker in the Saratov region, has more than 2 million subscribers on YouTube. Andras Toth-Czifra said Bondarenko was a high-profile candidate who had been expected to run in a constituency where State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin has strong political influence.
Toth-Czifra said the pressure on Communist Party candidates had not proceeded in the same way as the methods used against Yabloko. In his view, different methods were used in regions where the Communist Party was strong and the propensity to protest was high; eliminating candidates on minor grounds may be linked to efforts by regional officials and public servants to demonstrate their loyalty to the Kremlin.
Some candidates withdraw from the race
Concerns about facing the United Russia party also led some candidates to withdraw from the elections of their own accord. Nikolay Skrynnik, who was backed by the Communist Party in the Kursk regional parliamentary elections, withdrew his candidacy this month.
Skrynnik, 75, from the border city of Sudzha, which Ukraine temporarily controlled during 2024-2025, said his decision resulted from pressure he faced within the party. He said that after his candidacy was approved, he was asked to delete his posts about the activities of the regional administration, the governor or United Russia.
Skrynnik argued that it was clear his candidacy gave him an advantage over the United Russia candidate and that this was why he was not intended to be allowed to win.
