Russia’s Supreme Court has ruled to remove the Yabloko party from this September’s State Duma election, according to a broadcast of the court hearing. The hearing lasted about seven hours. The main claims brought by the plaintiff, the Rodina (lit. “Motherland”) party, concerned alleged copyright violations, excessive campaign spending, and “extremist statements” made by Yabloko representatives.
At the hearing, Rodina representatives described those claims in greater detail, arguing, for example, that a photograph of the Hiroshima bombing on Yabloko’s website violated the copyright of the U.S. Army, and that images generated with ChatGPT violated the rights of its developer, OpenAI. No evidence was presented suggesting that the copyright holders themselves ever filed any complaints over the alleged violations.
An analysis of Yabloko’s logo displayed at the court hearing. Rodina argued that it was borrowed from artist El Lissitzky’s 1920 poster “Beat the Whites With the Red Wedge.” The Central Election Commission disagreed in court.
At the hearing, Yabloko chairman Nikolai Rybakov quoted Vladimir Putin on the need for a ceasefire in the war, saying Yabloko’s position did not contradict the president’s words.
