The Russian Supreme Court today dissolved the opposition party PARNAS (People’s Freedom), among others the liberal political leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot in front of the Kremlin walls in 2015. The argument presented by the Ministry of Justice was that the number of subsidiaries of the political formation has been reduced from 47 to 40 since the beginning of the year, according to the Mediazona portal.
In this way, the party has partners in less than half of the regions of this country, enough to cause its immediate liquidation. PARNAS claims to now have 44 subsidiaries, which is more than half of the allied entities that existed before the start of the war in Ukraine (85).
Russia annexed four Ukrainian regions in September 2022 – Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia – which were included in the Constitution, now there are 89 regions in the Russian Federation. These regions cannot be considered part of the opposition, since there are still no proper executive bodies in them.
Founded in 1990 as the Republican Party of Russia, it changed its name in 2012 when it decided to join other opposition groups critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In addition to Nemtsov, the party arrested former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and imprisoned Ilya Yashin, who is serving eight and a half years in prison for criticizing Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
The extra-parliamentary opposition accuses the Kremlin of pressuring its leaders to mute their criticism of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, condemning them to long prison terms and forcing them into exile. Although the president denied that he intended to “launch a witch hunt”, he ordered the Office of the Prosecutor and the security forces to ensure the end of “scum” in this country.
