MOSCOW: Russia's Supreme Court on Monday barred the country's only anti-war party, Yabloko, from contesting September's parliamentary elections.
The court thereby upheld a suit brought by a pro-Kremlin nationalist party, stripping voters opposed to the four-and-a-half-year war in Ukraine of their last option on the ballot.
"The claims seeking to annul the registration of the federal list of candidates for the State Duma of the ninth convocation, nominated by the Yabloko political party, were granted," judge Vyacheslav Kirillov said.
With most of President Vladimir Putin's opponents jailed, exiled or dead, Yabloko is the only liberal party still operating in Russia.
The party has received the backing of several exiled opposition figures, including Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Both are listed as "extremists" in Russia.
'Stop deaths'
About a hundred supporters, mostly young people, gathered outside the courthouse, chanting "Shame! Shame!" after the ruling was delivered.
Addressing them after the hearing, Yabloko leader Nikolay Rybakov said the party would appeal the decision.
"We have a long way ahead and we have a big and important task: to stop deaths and bring the peace back," he said.
"Everything we do should be dedicated to that," Rybakov added.
Yabloko supporter Yevgenia, 22, told AFP before the decision that she would vote for the party to show the government that "we are not satisfied with the current state of affairs in the world".
"We would really like to reach some kind of peaceful agreement so that this special military operation can finally come to an end," she added, using Russia's official term for the offensive.
With Ukrainian retaliatory strikes on refineries and e-commerce warehouses disrupting ordinary Russian life ever more, Yabloko is seeking to capitalise on its peace agenda, particularly among young voters.
It is also seeking to tap into widespread anger at internet shutdowns introduced by authorities to counter Ukrainian drone attacks.
Party under pressure
In recent years, Yabloko's members have come under increasing scrutiny for their opposition to the fighting. In an interview with AFP over the weekend, Rybakov said around 40 party activists were facing prosecution.
The party's deputy leader Maxim Kruglov was jailed for seven years in June over social media posts he made critical of the conflict, while authorities arrested the head of the party's Pskov branch -- Lev Shlosberg -- last year.
Rybakov was himself fined in December for publishing a photo of Navalny on social media -- an act that has barred him from running in the September vote.
A poll conducted earlier this year showed Yabloko ("apple" in Russian) at just 3% support -- short of the 5% threshold needed to enter Russia's lower house.
Founded in 1993 by a group of pro-Western public officials, Yabloko enjoyed relative success in the years following the post-Soviet collapse.
Since 2003, however, it has failed to win seats in the State Duma as the Kremlin tightened its control over elections, with the pro-Putin United Russia party winning every parliamentary vote since.
Efforts to end the Ukraine war through diplomacy have so far failed, with Putin pushing hardline territorial demands to end the fighting and ruling out talks with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Independent polls show most Russians favor peace negotiations with Kyiv.
