The Moskovsky District Court of Tver has barred the regional committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, or CPRF, from holding a reporting and election conference at which the party planned to nominate a candidate for governor and approve a list for the regional legislative assembly elections. Kommersant reported this.
The conference had been scheduled for June 27. The ban was imposed as an interim measure in a lawsuit filed by three former CPRF members: regional lawmaker Artem Goncharov and former Tver city council deputies Murad Nurmuradov and Sergey Shishkov.
The plaintiffs are challenging the legitimacy of the party’s previous conference, held in December 2024. According to the newspaper, the conflict within the Tver regional branch began over a struggle for the post of first secretary. The regional organization has been led for more than 20 years by Lyudmila Vorobyova.
A source cited by the publication said that Artem Goncharov had also sought that position. He and his supporters were then expelled from the party. They first tried to challenge the decision through party bodies and later took the matter to court.
In court, the former party members succeeded in being reinstated after pointing to procedural violations. However, the newspaper writes that the regional committee still effectively chose to ignore them. They then moved to challenge the most recent conference.
The court suspended the new conference until a ruling in the lawsuit takes legal effect. The hearing is scheduled for July 14. Because of this, the CPRF will not be able to nominate a gubernatorial candidate before July 13, the legal deadline. The deadline for submitting a party list for the legislative assembly elections expires on July 23.
Yury Afonin, first deputy chairman of the CPRF Central Committee, called the situation “unprecedented” and said the court was effectively preventing a parliamentary party from taking part in the elections.