Yabloko officials have indicated they will not respond to a request from Nikolai Novichkov, a deputy in the State Duma, asking the Ministry of Justice to review the party’s potential closure. This information was relayed to socialbites.ca by Maxim Kruglov, who leads Yabloko’s faction in the Moscow City Duma. Kruglov stressed that the party cannot reply to every single report that lands on its desk.
“I believe Yabloko will not engage with this matter at all. The dog may be barking, but the caravan moves on. Our party has received a large volume of reports, and it is simply not feasible to answer each one,” Kruglov noted.
Nikolai Novichkov, who previously served as a State Duma deputy with A Just Russia – For Truth, floated a proposal to Russia’s Minister of Justice, Konstantin Chuichenko, inviting him to consider whether there are grounds to liquidate Yabloko on the basis of potential extremist activity indicators. In the same breath, Novichkov urged Yabloko to review its stance on the reunification of Crimea with Russia and the incorporation of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, as well as the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, into the Russian Federation. Observers suggest such calls reflect ongoing tension between political actors and the opposition, with questions about legal thresholds and political neutrality dominating the discourse. (Source: socialbites.ca)