Yabloko leader criticizes election voting strategy proposed by Russian opposition figures Navalnaya and Kats: ‘They sit abroad and manipulate you’

Nikolai Rybakov, the leader of the Yabloko party, criticized a voting strategy proposed by politicians Yulia Navalnaya and Maxim Kats for elections to the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, during a meeting with supporters in St. Petersburg. The Telegram channel Varlamov News published video from the meeting.The core idea behind the joint recommendations from Navalnaya and Kats is to vote for any party other than United Russia, Russia’s ruling party, on party-list ballots. In single-mandate districts, they proposed voting for whichever candidate has the best chance of standing up to the ruling party.When one attendee asked Rybakov for his stance on the Navalnaya-Kats proposals, the question drew applause from the audience. “Some of you just applauded happily. What did you applaud for? You applauded for calling on me to commit a human act of baseness — and to commit one yourselves,” Rybakov replied.According to the Yabloko leader, the authorities are sending his colleagues to prison for 11 years — “and now you want to support them in the election.”Because some people who do not understand politics led things to a point where people are dying. They did that through what they did in 2021. You are proposing that we go, like sheep, marching to their tune again, and vote for the very people who led to the killing of people in Russia and in Ukraine. That responsibility will not be theirs. It will be on your hands. Personally, on yours.If you are saying that our plan is too simple and that you want to play games with card sharks, fine, go ahead and play. But the price will not be your own life. It will be the lives of those who end up in prison.And afterward there will be no way to say, “Oh, Yulia just did not think it through, look at that.” Yes, but they are abroad, while we are here. We are telling you this is how it will be. It ends in people being killed and prison sentences! They are sitting abroad and manipulating you!The Telegram channel SotaVision reported that Rybakov called on supporters to back Yabloko’s candidates in single-mandate districts and outlined the party’s “Plan B”: spoiling party-list ballots. Journalists estimated that about 1,300 people attended the meeting.At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.