Yabloko Party Receives Navalny Widow’s Call to Support Anti‑War Vote in Russian Election

Yulia Navalnaia, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, issued a public appeal urging Russian citizens to vote for the liberal Yabloko party in the upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for 20 September. She framed the endorsement as a moral and political duty to help end the war in Ukraine.

Yabloko’s leader, Nikolai Ribakov, responded on Telegram that the party’s campaign is independent and not financed from abroad, stressing that it runs a clean, anti‑war platform focused on diplomacy, human rights and a prosperous democratic Russia. The party has cleared the Central Election Commission’s requirements to appear on the ballot for the State Duma, positioning itself as the sole legally recognised opposition party openly opposing the Kremlin’s war.

The exchange highlights the limited space for anti‑war voices within Russia’s tightly controlled electoral environment and the strategic calculations of both the opposition’s widow and the Yabloko leadership ahead of the September vote.