Pre-election campaigning by candidates and parties is their way of telling voters about themselves; without it, no adequate election is possible. Of course, campaigning must be regulated. For example, the rules under which it is paid for from the electoral fund seem entirely logical — this puts rich and poor candidates in relatively equal conditions. It is good that spreading false information about competing candidates in campaign materials is prohibited.
However, since 2002, when the framework law on elections was adopted, the requirements for campaigning in Russia have become increasingly complex. At the same time, as usual, the prohibitions are often formulated very broadly, so that perfectly conscientious actions by candidates are frequently pulled under them. And the complexity of the rules requires turning to competent lawyers, which is far from accessible to all candidates.
Moreover, with each passing year the selective application of the laws becomes ever more obvious: what would inevitably lead to the cancellation of registration for an opposition candidate goes perfectly unpunished for a pro-government candidate, even if election commissions are notified of the violation.
The basic law
The generally decent Federal Law No. 67-FZ of 12 June 2002 “On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right of Citizens of the Russian Federation to Participate in a Referendum” established the basic rules of campaigning. Most of them were quite acceptable. However, even this law contains norms that, due to insufficiently precise wording, can be used to exert pressure on undesirable candidates.
In particular, the law sets out a norm requiring copies of all campaign materials to be submitted to the election commission, and before their distribution begins. If the candidate is from the opposition, compliance with these rules is monitored strictly.
A female candidate from Ulan-Ude in 2024 submitted a copy of a campaign material to the election commission three days later than she began distributing it and received a fine of 5,000 rubles, although nothing objectionable was found in the material itself.
And in 2025, Larisa Mukhina, a CPRF candidate for governor of Leningrad Oblast, showed her campaign booklets at a district committee meeting — to her own party comrades, who were discussing the design. When a copy of the booklets was submitted to the election commission, it found violations in it, and the print run had to be redone. But the very fact that the prohibited campaign material was available at a district committee meeting, even if only to party comrades, was called “distribution” — Mukhina was fined for this! And later she was denied registration altogether, albeit for a different reason.
Another key campaigning norm from the basic law: images of any people (other than the candidates themselves), as well as their statements about a party or candidate, may be placed in materials only with the written consent of those people, and only if they are 18 or older.
In 2023, activist Vladimir Atamanchuk tried to run for the City Duma of Sochi. A court fined Atamanchuk for using in a leaflet statements about him by pensioner Rashid Koblev “without his consent”. It later emerged that Rashid Koblev had given such permission, and that it had been submitted to the election commission in accordance with procedure. But certain unknown persons forged a statement on Koblev’s behalf claiming that he had supposedly not given his consent. The forgery of the document was not investigated.
That is, against opposition candidates, “violations” in campaigning are attempted to be used even when there were none. In relation to approved candidates, by contrast, even obvious violations are ignored.
Thus, in 2023, in the Voronezh Oblast gubernatorial election, the incumbent governor Alexander Gusev posted a photo with children in his Telegram channel — that is, minors, whose images are prohibited from being used. Candidates’ Telegram channels were by that point considered official campaign platforms, and all norms relating to campaigning applied to them. However, despite active discussion of this fact in the press, the election commission preferred to “not notice” the violation by Gusev. He won the election and remains governor of Voronezh Oblast to this day.
The copyright trap
Substantial changes to the rules of campaigning occurred after the adoption of Federal Law No. 225-FZ of 5 December 2006 “On Amendments to the Federal Law ‘On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right of Citizens of the Russian Federation to Participate in a Referendum’ and the Civil Procedure Code of the Russian Federation”.
In particular, the law prohibited the use in campaigning of materials containing justification of “extremism” and calls for it. Restrictions on negative campaigning — against other candidates — also appeared. But most importantly, this law introduced a ban on campaigning that violates intellectual property rights, also known as copyright. This became a powerful tool for filtering opposition candidates, which is still used to this day.
In 2021, in Ulyanovsk Oblast, Sergei Morgachev, a State Duma candidate from A Just Russia, quoted in his campaign materials the poem “Prayer” by Sergei Bekhteyev, written in 1917. Bekhteyev died in 1954, meaning that formally 70 years had not yet passed since his death at that point, and “Prayer” was not in the public domain. Needless to say, Morgachev did not approach the heirs and rights holders for permission to use the poem.
A certain candidate Vasilisa Kiseleva from Civic Platform complained about him. In addition to “Prayer”, in her view, Morgachev also “violated” copyright by placing a crossword in his campaign materials and by using an unusual font. And on these, frankly, dubious grounds the court applied the “supreme measure” — it removed the candidate from the election!
In 2022, the mayor of Nyurba (Yakutia), Alexander Ivanov, stood as a candidate in the election for head of Nyurbinsky District. He performed a song by a local author and published it in his Telegram channel. The author himself, named Aiaal Kirillin-Kündel, stated that his rights had been violated in this way. Well, in this case the very fact of the violation is hard to question — yet again the severity of the sanction is striking: Ivanov was also removed from the election for a song!
2024, elections to the Council of People’s Deputies of the city of Gus-Khrustalny: a court cancelled the registration of candidate Samir Ragimov (CPRF) for using in his campaign, without the rights holder’s permission… his own photograph! Earlier this photo of Ragimov had been published on VKontakte in one of the public pages; the owner of the public page testified that he had not given Ragimov permission and that he considered his rights violated. Again — the question is not so much about the violation itself as about the severity of the punishment.
Olga Sorokina ran for the Moscow City Duma in 2024. In her campaign video, the “Cascade” fountain appeared in the frame. According to the plaintiff, a certain citizen Kazimirova, the fountain — that is, an architectural object standing in the street — has “intellectual owners”, the architects Larisa Metaikina and Yuri Sverdlovsky! Which means Sorokina allegedly “violated” their copyright.
Fortunately, the court dismissed the claim, but solely on formal grounds — Kazimirova was an improper plaintiff.
In the same year, 2024, Anton Timchenko (A Just Russia), a candidate for the municipal council of Preobrazhenskoye in Moscow, was removed from registration for using words from the song “Clap-Clap” by the band Nautilus Pompilius (“Grains will be cast into bullets, bullets will be cast into weights, with such a percussion instrument we will break through all the walls in the world”), as well as a quotation from the Chairman of the Constitutional Court, Valery Zorkin. Here is the quotation from Zorkin’s article “The Sleep of Law Breeds Monsters”: “What was invented under the guise of law and adopted in haste for random purposes and momentary gains is nothing other than legal ‘spam’.” Appreciate the irony!
Anton Timchenko appealed to that very Constitutional Court demanding that the norm be repealed or amended — because it is formulated too vaguely. But the Constitutional Court refused to follow the logic of its own chairman’s article and to recognise the norm on copyright in campaigning as “legal spam”; Timchenko was denied consideration of his complaint.
Another case from the realm of fine arts: in 2025, Denis Malov, a self-nominated candidate in the elections to the Assembly of Deputies in Troitsk (Chelyabinsk Oblast), was removed from registration for quoting Boris Pasternak’s poem “It Is Not Seemly to Be Famous” — without the rights holder’s consent (Pasternak died in 1960; his works will enter the public domain in 2030). The claim was filed by United Russia member Elena Pashchenko.
The list of such cases could be continued for a very long time. But it cannot be concluded without the obligatory example of how the law, like the proverbial shaft, always turns in the direction the authorities need. In 2021, in Ulyanovsk Oblast, a claim was filed against Vladimir Kononov, a United Russia candidate for the State Duma. The plaintiffs Valentina Nikonova (New People) and Alexander Bragin (Yabloko) asserted that Kononov had placed a QR code on his leaflets leading to his Instagram. There were photos of third parties there, including children, and objects of intellectual property (for example, the Aeroflot trademark on an aeroplane). In addition, Bragin wrote in the claim that, since Kononov is not a member of United Russia but merely stands as its candidate, he should have obtained consent to use United Russia’s symbols, and he had none.
Later Nikonova withdrew her claim, and the court dismissed Bragin’s, finding him an improper plaintiff. Kononov was elected as a deputy.
The slow tightening of the screws
In the following decade, the laws gradually became ever stricter.
Federal Law No. 203-FZ of 19 July 2009 “On Amendments to Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation on Elections and Referendums Regarding the Provision of Airtime and Print Space for Pre-Election Campaigning” established unequal rights for systemic and non-systemic parties. If your party crossed the established threshold in the previous elections, it is entitled to free airtime and print space. If you have a new party, or you were not effective in the previous elections, you will get the same only for a fee.
Formally, this supposedly filters out “frivolous” candidates from the airwaves, who might use elections for their own PR, for artistic performances or something similar. In reality, this is an obvious additional barrier limiting the opportunities of the non-systemic opposition.
It is interesting that at that moment even the systemic opposition opposed these changes: the CPRF and the LDPR voted “against” in full, while A Just Russia bravely did not participate in the vote (apart from two renegades who were “for”).
Federal Law No. 66-FZ of 9 March 2016 “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation on Elections and Referendums and Other Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation” extended all the rules of campaigning to online media. A logical step. At the same time, these requirements did not yet extend to social networks, messengers and ordinary websites.
The next interesting novelty is Federal Law No. 92-FZ of 5 April 2016 “On Amendments to Articles 48 and 54 of the Federal Law ‘On Basic Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right of Citizens of the Russian Federation to Participate in a Referendum’ and Articles 62 and 68 of the Federal Law ‘On the Election of Deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation’”.
This law abolished the permission to use images of any third parties in campaigning. Previously, if you remember, this was allowed with the written consent of the third parties themselves, and now it is not allowed — and that is that.
The logic here is to prevent stars, for example from sport, cinema and show business, from campaigning for candidates and parties. Or rather, their words can still be used, but you can no longer place a photo of the candidate together with a star on a leaflet. However, it is still possible to use an image with “unidentifiable persons” — that is, the candidate surrounded by ordinary citizens whom nobody knows.
How adequate this norm is “in a vacuum” is a debatable question. In practice in Russia, however, it has of course been attempted to be used against disloyal candidates.
In 2025, in the elections to the Legislative Assembly of Chelyabinsk Oblast, the CPRF used in a leaflet images of people generated by artificial intelligence. The election commission considered them “individuals” — although at that point, before the ban on the use of AI in campaigning, they were essentially that very “unidentifiable circle of persons” whose images are not prohibited from being used.
Fortunately, the court overturned the regional election commission’s decision that the material with AI people violated the law.
Federal Law No. 43-FZ of 9 March 2021 “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation” established that election commissions are now obliged not simply to react to signals about violations in campaigning, but to actively monitor candidates themselves. And if violations are found — to turn to the courts, Roskomnadzor and law-enforcement bodies.
Again the systemic opposition voted against the law; even the usually loyal LDPR did not support it — clearly these parties expected damage to their campaigns from it.
The law also extended the rules of campaigning to social networks and indeed any publications on the internet. Now candidates are obliged to register their personal social-media accounts, Telegram channels, etc. with election commissions as campaign platforms, with all the corresponding restrictions.
Of course, not all candidates managed to notice these norms and react. For example, in 2024, Ramziya Razzhivina, a candidate for deputy of the city duma of the city of Mozhga (Udmurtia), distributed photos, videos and comments with a mass of “violations” on her VKontakte page — and called on people to vote for her. She simply did not know that doing this was prohibited. She received an administrative penalty.
But Yaroslav Kostrov, an activist and candidate for deputy of the municipal formation “Liteyny Okrug” (St Petersburg), was in the same year 2024 removed from registration. For writing an article in the VK public page “Central District for a Comfortable Living Environment”, which he himself ran. It was a post about the famous unfinished construction project “High-Speed Railway” (HSR) near Moskovsky railway station. The court considered the article to be campaigning. And since Kostrov, being the administrator of the public page, had not registered it as a campaign platform with the election commission, he had thereby allegedly violated the law. Incidentally, in the same article Kostrov placed sketches of the HSR project, which was deemed a “copyright violation”.
Under wartime laws
The first in the series of ultra-draconian laws was adopted even before the war.
Federal Law No. 91-FZ of 20 April 2021 “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation” obliged foreign agents to indicate in campaign materials that they are foreign agents — if such persons themselves stand for election or participate in campaigning.
It is interesting that while the war had not begun, even the LDPR timidly opposed pressure on foreign agents — 38 did not vote, with one brave soul who went so far as to abstain.
And when the war against Ukraine entered its hot phase after the start of the full-scale invasion, new strictures began.
Federal Law No. 60-FZ of 14 March 2022 “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation” introduced new norms against foreign agents — now this status had to be indicated in campaign materials if they were merely mentioned there.
The LDPR moved into the “for” category; only the CPRF did not support discrimination against foreign agents.
Soon, however, foreign agents were banned from participating in elections altogether.
Federal Law No. 184-FZ of 29 May 2023 “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation” prohibited the use in campaigning of materials from websites whose access is restricted by Roskomnadzor. From that moment, a campaign newspaper could no longer cite, for example, an anti-corruption investigation if it was published in an émigré media outlet or a banned social network.
The CPRF and A Just Russia almost entirely opposed the law; the LDPR and New People supported United Russia.
The most recent innovation is Federal Law No. 130-FZ of 2 May 2026 “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation”. It prohibited the use in campaigning of the voices, videos and images of deceased people, as well as people generated with the help of artificial intelligence.
It is obvious that the ban on using the dead will hit first of all the LDPR, whose entire electoral appeal is still based on the charisma of the late Vladimir Zhirinovsky — yet the LDPR themselves voted for the law.
The CPRF will also suffer, as it will apparently be unable to use the images of Lenin and Stalin in campaigning — the communists, logically, voted against.
The ban on the use of AI will most significantly affect independent candidates, for whom this tool would have been the most accessible way to quickly and inexpensively produce quality campaign materials.
The history of pre-election campaigning in Russia has passed through all stages from adequate regulation to a “minefield” of prohibitions. Candidates, especially if they do not have a team of lawyers in their campaign headquarters, constantly risk violating something. Moreover, the most innocent violation threatens to turn into the “supreme measure” — removal from the election.
The vagueness of the wording in the laws and the possibility of their extremely broad interpretation turn the conduct of a creative election campaign into a dangerous business. Independent candidates have to make their way between Scylla and Charybdis — on the one hand, trying not to violate anything (which can be achieved with certainty only in one case — by not campaigning at all); on the other, still trying to tell the voter at least something about themselves in order to get a chance at victory.
The only thing that is pleasing is that violating the rules of campaigning as such does not yet entail criminal liability. The question of how soon this omission will be corrected remains open.