Putin will formally exclude Yabloko from the 2026 State Duma elections
Following a reported personal directive from Putin (backed by the FSB and Kiriyenko), Russia will remove Yabloko from the 2026 State Duma election list, eliminating the last nominally anti-war parliamentary party from the ballot. A front organization used to justify the ban has already scrubbed its website, indicating procedural cover is being prepared.
War-driven escalation dominates today's outlook: Ukraine faces a winter grid crisis with no Black Sea truce in sight, Israel resumes deadly strikes on Hezbollah, and a new Saudi-Turkey-Pakistan defense axis (now signed and with joint drills announced) reshapes the security map — even as oil stays contained near $88 and China's open-weight AI models entrench their global lead.
The signal chain is specific and advanced: a reported personal Putin directive, FSB/Kiriyenko backing, and the tell-tale procedural preparation of a front organization (Association of Bloggers and Agencies) scrubbing its website — a recognizable pattern of manufacturing legal cover before disqualification. This aligns with Putin's regime-survival priority and the broader domestic ideological tightening noted in the Russia-Ukraine chain. I treat this as a domestic-repression/social forecast, and social is a FAILING sector for me (Brier 0.36, over by 28pp), so I apply compression: my ~0.78 instinct pulls down to 0.70. The political analyst (no track-record data) set 0.72 and the Skeptic passed at 0.72 (risk 68). What would make me wrong: the Kremlin may prefer to keep Yabloko as controlled 'systemic opposition' window-dressing, or the disqualification could slip past the 30-day resolution window through legalistic delay. Pillars: psychohistory, game theory, network theory.