The Kremlin has initiated a new crackdown on anti-war voices ahead of Russia’s parliamentary elections in September, barring candidates from running if they show any sign of opposing the bloody, expensive and increasingly unpopular military operation in Ukraine.
While repression of political opposition forces is nothing new in President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the new clampdown is jarring because for a moment this spring, it seemed like a rare window had opened for dissent, as the authorities appeared to create a pressure release valve for growing dissatisfaction over the war.
But with the government coming under increasing pressure over Ukraine’s relentless drone strikes and the growing toll on the economy, including an acute fuel crisis, hard-liners in the Kremlin and the security services are gaining the upper hand and have pushed successfully for more repressive measures.
In recent weeks, the liberal-leaning Yabloko Party, which is attempting to campaign under the slogan “For Peace and Freedom” — a pointed counter to Putin’s unyielding push for conquest — has come under increasing pressure across the country. Meanwhile, Russia’s most prominent anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin, who sought to run as an independent, has been barred from the campaign.
Authorities in St. Petersburg last week refused to register Yabloko for the local parliamentary elections, and more than a dozen of its candidates have been barred from federal and regional elections over accusations they displayed alleged “extremist symbols” such as posting photos online of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
The Russian authorities “are not going to give any platform to people with anti-war views in the election,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, an independent political analyst in Moscow. “There is now not one noticeable voice against the war.”
Recent challenges to Yabloko’s registration in several regions over claims of incorrect paperwork could lead to Yabloko being barred overall from the federal election, analysts say — a move that could strengthen United Russia, the ruling party that controls the parliament and has long backed Putin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied the government was targeting anti-war voices, and said individuals were being punished for “violations of the law.”
“Those who break the law are under pressure and those who don’t break it freely speak their opinion,” Peskov told The Washington Post. “I wouldn’t even call Yabloko a party. It’s no more than a cell,” he added.
In spring, however, the atmosphere seemed very different. A video posted by social media influencer Viktoriya Bonya lambasting the government’s botched handling of internet restrictions and other problems went viral, forcing the Kremlin to respond.
A former Kremlin lawyer, Ilya Remeslo, openly branded Putin a war criminal and a thief — but after a brief incarceration in a psychiatric hospital was somehow released and allowed to continue his tirade. More recently in June, German Gref, the head of Russia’s biggest state bank, broke ranks by publicly saying everyone wanted the war to end as soon as possible.
Remeslo, whose open stance against the war had been seen as representing a divide in the upper reaches of the Kremlin, has since been quietly arrested, accused of spreading allegedly false information about the Russian military — a charge that carries a prison sentence of up to 10 years. He is now being held in a Moscow psychiatric facility, the Serbsky Institute, notorious for its incarceration of political prisoners, according to Remeslo’s lawyer, Sergei Badamshin.
Forces in the Kremlin decided to put an end to the public dissent, Nadezhdin, the independent anti-war candidate, told Post in an interview after he was briefly detained and fined for displaying alleged “extremist symbols” — for sharing a link to a video containing an image of Navalny, who died in prison in 2024.
On July 10, the Justice Ministry declared Nadezhdin a foreign agent, a move that barred him from public office, and he was prohibited from leaving the country.
“People trust Putin and United Russia less and less because the war has come to them,” Nadezhdin said. “Every day, warehouses and oil bases are exploding. People are dying. And in this situation they are trying to get rid of the most visible political actors like me and Yabloko, who speak against the war and for peace and freedom.”
Nadezhdin, who won popularity on an anti-war platform in the 2024 presidential elections until the authorities refused to register him as a candidate, said he was now withdrawing completely from opposition politics because it had become impossible.
In the weeks since public dissatisfaction spilled into the open, Putin’s popularity ratings continued to fall.
On July 17, a state pollster, the Public Opinion Foundation, recorded the biggest one-week drop in Putin’s approval rating since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, a decline of five percentage points to 66 percent.
Putin’s falling ratings have been exacerbated by Ukraine’s campaign of long-range drone strikes on Russian oil facilities that have caused widespread fuel shortages and price hikes across the country and potentially pose a threat to this year’s harvest. His declining popularity has raised the stakes in the parliamentary elections, analysts and opposition politicians said.
“More and more people don’t understand if the authorities at least have a plan about how to exit the situation with the war, and whether all these sacrifices and losses being wrought on Russian society and the economy are justified,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
“2026 is a turning point,” she added. “In the first four years of the war people lived in the understanding that the authorities know what they’re doing. Now they don’t know what to expect from tomorrow and there is the feeling that the situation is getting out of control while the authorities don’t have a plan.”
“Everyone is living from day-to-day,” Stanovaya said, “while Putin seems far removed from reality.”
The Kremlin can remove perceived opposition voices at will, and is widely expected to retain a tight grip on the election.
Still, the gloomy backdrop appears to have forced the Kremlin to reassess what would constitute a win, especially amid persistent public anxiety that the government is planning a new military conscription effort after the election.
Officials now forecast United Russia could win with 45 percent of the vote, Russian independent news outlet Meduza reported, down from a previous official prediction of 55 percent.
In the Kremlin, officials are still divided over how to handle the increasingly thorny situation, according to Nadezhdin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former Russian oil tycoon who is now a leading opposition figure living in exile in London.
The recent arrest of Remeslo is a sign that Russia’s Federal Security Service is strengthening its hand against more progressive forces in the Kremlin who had supported figures like Remeslo, Khodorkovsky said.
“In Putin’s circle a discussion is going on about what to do,” Nadezhdin said. “The [security services] are just trying to repress everyone … And the other part of the administration is trying to somehow work … and get some kind of acceptable result at the election. But it is becoming more and more difficult.”
In recent weeks, at least 14 members of Yabloko have been barred from running over accusations that they displayed alleged “extremist symbols,” and the party’s registration is being challenged in several regions over claims of incorrect paperwork. The Federal Election Commission has yet to register Yabloko’s list of candidates.
In addition, at least four members of the Communist Party have been barred from running over charges they posted “extremist symbols.”
With little sign of renewed peace negotiations, some Russian officials appear to hope that the political situation in Kyiv will deteriorate first, Khodorkovsky said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week ordered a far-reaching government shake-up, including the dismissal of the defense minister, the prime minister and the commander in chief of the armed forces.
“They are counting on political destabilization in Kyiv,” Khodorkovsky said of hawks in the Kremlin.
As Russia ramps up ballistic missile strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure in response to Ukraine’s drone campaign, the impact on Ukraine is becoming ever more worrying, one senior Ukrainian official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
“Of course the Russians suffer a lot,” this official said. “But we suffer the same and on an even bigger scale and what will happen in the winter, no one can say.”
Natalia Abbakumova contributed to this report.
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