MOSCOW, Sept 16 (Reuters) – As a digital billboard behind her displays an advert urging Russians to sign up to fight in Ukraine, Polina Lermant tries to hand out flyers to passers-by urging them to “vote for peace” in a parliamentary election starting on Friday.
It’s a risky enterprise.
Lermant, 24, a candidate in Moscow for Russia’s liberal Yabloko party, the only registered political force inside Russia to oppose the war in Ukraine, said she feared the authorities might accuse her of wrongdoing and jail her, a fate some of her party colleagues have suffered.
“I’m really afraid. My parents and my husband are really worried about me. I am afraid that the repression will start,” Lermant told Reuters in an interview as she campaigned.
Lev Shlosberg, a senior party colleague, was jailed for 11 years for comments about the war last month, and Yabloko’s deputy leader, Maxim Kruglov, was jailed for seven years on similar charges in June.
Recalling how her great-grandfather was exiled to the Ural Mountains from Moscow in the Soviet era after being convicted of discrediting the Red Army, a charge now levelled against war critics over the modern Russian military, she said fear had returned to society.
“It’s really terrifying that 90 years later people in Russia are still afraid that they will be jailed or that something will be done to them,” she said, referring to the increasingly narrow space for public dissent.
The Kremlin says wartime censorship and national unity are vital because of what it says are increasingly dangerous efforts by Ukraine’s intelligence services and other enemies to stir unrest inside Russia.
OUTCOME NOT IN DOUBT
Lermant is one of around a dozen candidates from Yabloko running in the three-day election to the 450-seat lower house of parliament, the State Duma, which has a track record of faithfully approving the Kremlin’s initiatives.
Yabloko wants Russia to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine. The Kremlin has ruled this out, saying it wants an overall deal that meets its own conditions.
The parliamentary election is the first since President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine in 2022 and will be used by authorities to gauge the depth of society’s war weariness when the economy is under strain — with fuel shortages caused by Ukrainian drone strikes, high interest rates, a labour crunch and Western sanctions.
For the Kremlin, it is also an exercise that it traditionally uses to project stability. Western political analysts say the Kremlin is likely to tout the outcome – which in Russia’s tightly controlled system is not in real doubt – as a fresh endorsement of Putin and his actions towards Ukraine.
The governing United Russia party (UR), which backs Putin, is expected to comfortably retain its dominance.
Four other parties in parliament, which all broadly vote in the same way as UR on major issues – the Communists, the nationalist LDPR, Just Russia and the New People party – are expected to win re-election too.
Battered by arrests and jailings, Yabloko, whose participation gives it a platform for its anti-war views, is unlikely to win any national seats.
STONE IN KREMLIN’S SHOE
Once a leading liberal force in post-Soviet Russia, Yabloko holds only a handful of seats in regional parliaments and none in the national parliament although, unlike self-exiled opposition figures, it has for years worked within the system.
Most Yabloko candidates were barred from contesting the election after the Supreme Court ruled on August 10 that they had broken electoral rules, a ruling Lermant said was prompted by official fears that Yabloko would make it into parliament and raise awkward questions about subjects including the war.
Discrediting the army or spreading what authorities regard as fake news are punishable with long jail terms.
In many regions, filming and posting online the aftermath of Ukrainian drone strikes is also a criminal offence.
Lermant was initially one of 16 Yabloko candidates left in the race because they were contesting single-mandate constituencies rather than competing on a party-list basis. More of her fellow candidates have since been disqualified.
Despite her concerns, Lermant said she felt strongly she was doing the right thing.
“It’s really important for us to tell people that there is the chance right now to vote for peace, to express their political position, and to say that we choose peace and a free life without fear,” she said.
RISING SUPPORT FOR PEACE TALKS
Lermant said she was encouraged by polling showing public support for peace negotiations had risen this year. This, she said, showed people were increasingly open to Yabloko’s ideas.
Polling from the Levada Center – which the authorities have designated a foreign agent – put public support for peace talks above 60%.
Lermant also referenced data from a government pollster showing support for Yabloko had been rising before most of its candidates were barred from contesting the election.
Regular pre-election polling by the main government-aligned pollsters no longer includes Yabloko, making it hard to gauge its popularity. The same pollsters have usually put its support in low single digits.
Anton Malyshev, a candidate in another part of Moscow for New People – a liberal-leaning party which says it is focused on the needs of people and entrepreneurs and favours a freer and more efficient state – told Reuters he was heavily focused on local issues.
He spoke of older residents’ concerns when bus routes changed and about an idea to raise money for the state budget by letting people officially buy personalised number plates for their cars.
Malyshev said the more parties that enter parliament, the better. He described New People as an authentic political force, pushing back against critics who say it is a vehicle to siphon off votes from young liberal urbanites to make them less likely to consider street protests.
His party’s programme avoids offering any opinion on the war in Ukraine beyond saying most Russians want a long-term peace concluded as soon as possible and that the country needs to be well placed to flourish when fighting ends. This broadly aligns with the Kremlin’s stance that an all-encompassing settlement on Moscow’s terms is the only acceptable outcome.
Asked whether he could outline his party’s thoughts on the conflict, Malyshev said it was interested in how best to support veterans and made no reference to what is happening on the battlefield or in global diplomacy.
“We prefer to build a new future and talk about what lies ahead,” he said. “Through our initiatives, we are looking to the future.”
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Timothy Heritage)
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