Elections in Russia: the 1001 tricks to remove inconvenient candidates

Getting eliminated from Russia's parliamentary election results from something as simple as posting a photo of a work of art by British artist Banksy on social media. A message in homage of Lemmy Kilmister, the founder of the famous rock group Motörhead, can also unleash the wrath of the Russian authorities.

With fewer than seven days before Russia's elections for members of the State Duma, scheduled for September 18-20, the Kremlin is refining its methods of purging “non grata” candidates. At least 36 candidates have already been disqualified by the electoral authorities, according to a recent investigation published by independent Russian media Verstka.

High-profile candidates removed

In absolute terms, the number could seem low in view of the 4,436 candidates trying to obtain a seat in Russia's 450-seat State Duma. The figure doesn't include the over 10,000 candidates running for regional parliaments.

Yet they were candidates who obtained the right to run – most often because they belong to Russia's so-called “systemic opposition” parties, a term used to describe parties accepted by the Kremlin. “Some of the concerned candidates are also high-profile politicians, like the communist Nikolai Bondarenko,” said Derek S. Hutchenson, a specialist of Russian politics at the University of Malmö and author of a book on the history of parliamentary elections in Russia.

The reasons used to remove candidates from running “sometimes border on the absurd, given how flimsy they are”, said Matthew Blackburn, a specialist in Russian politics at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI).

The least surprising reason cited by Russian authorities concerns candidates caught posting photos of the late opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who died in prison in November 2024. Any reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin's historic critic is considered as an “extremist” symbol by the Kremlin.

Other candidates judged as too “extremist” to participate in the elections are those who published images with logos of banned social media in Russia, like Facebook or Instagram. The communist Vladimir Vinichenko saw himself disqualified after he posted a photo of a 2019 protest with a visible Facebook logo, according to the Verstka website.

Possessing shares in Western companies can also be a disqualifier. The businessman Maxim Larin discovered this after being disqualified from running in the elections because his portfolio contained shares in Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.

Yet the candidates aren't held up to the same standards. The staunchly pro-Putin blogger Yevgeny Poddubny, for instance, never experienced issues regarding his Apple shares.

Motörhead and Banksy on the dock

In the category of the most extreme motives for disqualification, the candidate Dmitri Smirnov was barred after posting a photo of the founder of the band Motörhead Lemmy Kilmister. In the eyes of Russian courts, the rocker had the bad taste to wear a cross slung across his chest. The photo was deemed as extremist content which could be considered as a Nazi symbol.

In another case, the candidate Yaroslav Shcherbakov was removed from the ballot after he inserted an image of Banksy's famous work “Girl with a Balloon” in a campaign video. The courts ruled that it constituted a copyright infringement. “Russian copyright law is vaguely worded, leaving significant room for interpretation and making it a convenient fallback option for blocking an unwanted candidacy," said Hutchenson.

“We are currently witnessing a new phase of the process which began in the 2000s, which consists of using electoral laws to influence poll results,” added the expert.

And the authorities are becoming more “creative” in applying the laws. “The Kremlin has always maintained a balance between the carrot and the stick – which ranged from the privileges of the parliamentary office to banning candidates from running. This was to better control the political landscape,” said Jeff Hawn, an expert on Russia at the London School of Economics.

Resorting to preposterous motives to get rid of inconvenient candidates “is meant to be a show of force because one can do nothing when faced with these absurd pretexts, and this aims to prove that any resistance is futile”, said Hutchenson.

In addition, “since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, there has been an increase in bans on any candidate or party perceived to be a threat by the Kremlin or by the United Russia party which supports Vladimir Putin”, said Luke March, a specialist in Russian politics at the University of Edinburgh.

Political bloc against the security bloc

The bar is very low for a candidate to be considered a threat in this election, according to the expert. The power is in a particular situation where the “fall in popularity of both Vladimir Putin and the United Russia party because of a number of factors like the unpopular restrictions on internet access, fuel shortages, Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory and an overall fatigue from the war”, said March.

The example of the exclusion of the Yabloko party in January is particularly revealing in this respect. “It's a very unusual exclusion because Yabloko is a historic party which has always respected the rules of the game established by the power,” said Samuel Greene, a specialist in Russian politics at King's College in London.

Over half of the candidates sidelined from elections since the beginning of the year are members of the Yabloko party who were registered for local elections, according to the website Verstka.

Yabloko's error was believing that it could run on an anti-war platform opposed to the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin initially let the party campaign, but “its message for peace began drawing increasing attention on social media”, said Blackburn.

This political positioning would have “required the Russia United party to campaign on an openly pro-war platform; an uncomfortable position with the way the war has been dragging on”, said Greene.

The episode revealed a dynamic specific to Russian politics: the rivalry between two highly influential factions within the upper echelons of power. “On one side, there is the political bloc, whose mission is to maintain controlled elections to offer Russians the illusion of a democratic choice. On the other side, there is a security bloc which perceives the elections as a risk to the stability of the regime and does everything it can to render them meaningless,” said Greene.

If the Yabloko party and its candidates were able to present themselves in the beginning of the campaign, it was with the approval of the political bloc. The successive disqualifications of Yabloko candidates, and those from other parties, mean the security establishment has regained control over this election, according to the experts interviewed.

The spate of late disqualifications also reveals a growing unease regarding the war in Ukraine. “This is a way of making clear that one should not talk of peace during this election,” said Blackburn.

This article has been adapted from the original in French.