Navalny ally to take Russia to ECHR after Supreme Court agrees he was illegally barred from election, but rejects his case anyway

The Russian Supreme Court has ruled that Oleg Stepanov, the former head of opposition figure Alexey Navalny’s Moscow headquarters, was illegally banned from running for Parliament, in what he has called “an important precedent.”

In June, Stepanov was told by his district electoral commission, in Moscow’s Nagatinsky area, that he was barred from taking part in September’s parliamentary elections. He was denied the ability to run because of his association with the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), the Navalny operation labelled by the authorities as an extremist organization that same month. According to the law, people found to be collaborating with extremist organizations are not allowed to run for elected office.

But, according to Russian law, the extremism designation was only due to enter force on August 4, a long time after Stepanov was barred. He insisted that the refusal was unlawful, as it had not yet entered into legal force. The Supreme Court agreed.

However, in another twist, the high court rejected Stepanov’s appeal anyway. The parliamentary election in Russia took place September 17-19, still over a month after the August 4 date.

If the election commission had not banned him from running in June, they would have had the right to do so in August anyway, the court said.

He now intends to appeal the verdict in the European Court of Human Rights.

According to Stepanov, despite the failure to win the case in Moscow, he celebrated the court’s admission that he was illegally barred from the election as a victory, calling it an “important precedent” for possible future cases from the likes of Ilya Yashin, who was also banned in June.

On June 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that banned all people who have worked for or donated to extremist organizations from running for office. Some groups on the list include far-right neo-Nazi Right Sector, Islamic terrorists the Taliban, and the restorationist Christian denomination Jehovah’s Witnesses.

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