Despite being known as a dictatorship, Russia is officially a democracy.

The trick is to have 11 parties in the ballot: the first is Putin, which always "wins" 50% of the vote. The next nine are also Putin, but under different names: Communist Putin, Liberal Putin, Nationalist Putin. The name is the only difference between them—the politics are completely the same.

There is only one opposition party: Yabloko (Apple). Every five years they run for the State Duma (parlament), but always get around 1% of the vote—not enough to be in the Duma, which requires 5%.

But next month, the first Duma election since the start of the war will take place. Yabloko ran with the shortest campaign slogan in their history; only 43 words long, it boiled down to "STOP THE WAR". A vote for Yabloko, no matter whether you agree with the rest of their politics, was the only way to vote against the war. The party was getting more and more popular, with the polls showing their support at a whopping 18%. Even more surprisingly, the party was not immediately designated an illegal organization and was actually allowed to run in the election. It was clear to everyone: the vote will still be rigged, and Putin will still win, but Yabloko has the full chance of getting 5% of the vote and winning a few seats at the Duma. A glimmer of hope for the country was spreading among the anti-war citizens.

Until today.

A hearing was just held by the Supreme Court on a lawsuit filed by one of the smaller Putin parties, demanding for Yabloko to be banned from the election. They won. Yabloko is no longer running.

The most infuriating thing is the cited reason for their removal. There lawsuit had some usual arguments: the party is extremist, the party receives illegal foreign funding; those arguments were quickly disproven and dismissed. Instead, the court focused on an interview with Yabloko's founder, in which the interviewer quoted a children's song and a popular line from a book without the permission of their authors. Yep, you read that right. It was a copyright lawsuit: since the interview was promotional material and violated copyright, that means the party engaged in illegal promotion and shouldn't be allowed to run. All because of two small quotes (which are so common they're basically proverbs) and some picture from the internet they put in the interview.

I'm so fucking done with this country.