Russia's Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Yabloko, the only officially registered party that openly opposes Moscow's war in Ukraine, against its removal from the ballot for September parliamentary elections.

In a separate hearing on August 17, a court in the city of Pskov sentenced Lev Shlosberg, an outspoken deputy chairman of Yabloko, to more than 11 years in prison after convicting him under a law used to punish critics of the war.

The rulings underscore the Kremlin's determination to silence dissent, particularly on the war, and suggest that President Vladimir Putin is unwilling to risk the possibility of a strong showing by a party calling for an end to the conflict.

The September 18-20 elections to the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, will be the first since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Yabloko has centered its campaign on the slogan "For Peace and Freedom."

The Supreme Court decision "demonstrates a fundamental rejection of fair, competitive elections in Russia," Yabloko co-founder Grigory Yavlinsky said in a social media post, adding that it marked "a serious deepening crisis in the Russian political system and a lack of understanding of a desirable future."

"The fate of Russia -- this has always been our primary concern, and it worries us even more now," Yavlinsky said.

Late last month, the Central Election Commission unexpectedly registered Yabloko for the ballot. But on August 10, the Supreme Court sided with a nationalist party that alleged a range of violations, including funding from abroad, copyright infringements, and extremism -- allegations Yabloko called "absurd" -- and barred the party from the election.

At the appeal hearing on August 17, Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov said the case was not about technicalities, but about the state's ability to uphold the rule of law in times of crisis.

"We, the Yabloko party, demand that the electoral process be brought back into strict compliance with the law," Rybakov told the court. "We demand respect for the constitution of the Russian Federation. We demand respect for the rights of millions of Russian voters who want to live, love, and raise their children in peace in Russia and therefore want to vote for the Yabloko party," he said.

Yabloko said at least 35 people who came to the Supreme Court hoping to attend the hearing were detained by law enforcement before it began. Among them was actor Viktor Balabanov, one of the party's candidates for a Duma seat, the party said. Videos shared on social media showed several young people being escorted by police at the court. Only the parties involved in the case and journalists were allowed inside, although the hearing was supposed to be open to the public.

The party said it has the right to appeal to the Supreme Court's presidium and will do so soon. A reversal would be a major surprise, and an election official suggested the August 17 ruling was enough to ensure Yabloko is off the ballot.

Not long before the three-judge Supreme Court panel issued its ruling, the Pskov City Court convicted Shlosberg of discrediting and distributing false information about Russia's armed forces and sentenced him to 11 years and one month in prison. Both offenses were criminalized under laws adopted in March 2022, shortly after the invasion began, that carry penalties of up to 15 years in prison.

In his final remarks in court, Shlosberg maintained his innocence, accused the authorities of politically motivated prosecution, and repeated his outspoken criticism of the war.

"The lives of countless thousands of people have been cut short" by the war, he said, according to a transcript published by the news outlet Mediazona. "Sooner or later, the precise and complete death toll -- with names included -- will be made public, and the entire nation will shudder at this list of martyrs."

"Today, cemeteries in our country, including military ones, are growing far more rapidly than maternity wards, kindergartens, and schools," said Shlosberg, one of the most prominent Kremlin opponents still active in Russia.

Many of the country's other well-known opposition figures are in prison or in exile, and Aleksei Navalny, the best-known of them, died in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024 while serving a prison sentence.

Polls show that a majority of Russians want negotiations to end the war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers, and recent Ukrainian attacks on oil and gas infrastructure and other targets have brought the war closer to many citizens. Putin's approval ratings have been falling in recent months.

Putin has repeatedly rejected calls from Ukraine, the United States, and others for a cease-fire that would leave the front lines in place during peace talks. He has vowed to achieve goals including the seizure of the part of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine that Russian forces have been unable to overrun.

Inside Russia, the rulings against Yabloko and Shlosberg were the latest steps in what Kremlin critics describe as a long and tightening clampdown on dissent and a retreat from political representation and other freedoms under Putin, who has served as president or prime minister since 1999.

Yabloko was a significant political force for a decade after the Duma elections in 1993. It has not won any seats as a party in Duma elections since 2003, contests that have increasingly been marred by evidence of fraud in favor of the Kremlin-controlled United Russia party. United Russia holds more than the two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution in the current Duma, a chamber that has passed the Kremlin's major war-related legislation, including the laws under which Shlosberg was convicted.

Shlosberg's conviction comes as other party members face heavy pressure from Russian authorities. Dozens are being prosecuted, and several are in custody, including another deputy chairman, Maksim Kruglov, who was sentenced to seven years in prison in June over social media posts about the war published in 2022.

By RFE/RL