Israel does not need to adopt Russia’s opposition as its own cause. But it does need to understand what kind of state Russia is becoming — and what that means for Iran, Hamas, Russian Jews and Israelis who still travel there.

This is not another argument about whether one supports Ukraine or Russia.

It is about Russia and Israel.

On August 17, 2026, two things happened in Russia that are easy for an Israeli reader to dismiss as somebody else’s domestic politics.

Lev Shlosberg, deputy chairman of the liberal Yabloko party, was sentenced to 11 years and one month in prison over anti-war statements. At almost the same time, Yabloko’s federal list was definitively kept off the September parliamentary ballot.

Most Israelis have never heard of Shlosberg. Many have only a vague idea of what Yabloko is. That is understandable.

But the important part is not the electoral strength of one small Russian party. It is what the Russian state has decided its citizens should no longer be allowed to do.

Yabloko was not banned. It was not formally dissolved. It still exists.

It simply cannot perform the most basic function of a political party: stand in a national election and offer voters an alternative.

And the alternative it offered was particularly inconvenient — an end to the war, negotiations and peace.

The number the Kremlin may not want to see

Yabloko was never on the verge of defeating Vladimir Putin’s political machine.

It has no faction in the State Duma and only limited representation at the regional level. The case against its electoral list was brought by Rodina, a pro-Kremlin nationalist party. Yabloko rejected the allegations against it as politically motivated; notably, Russia’s Central Election Commission had previously registered the list.

So why bother removing a party that was not going to take power anyway?

Perhaps because its real danger was not the number of seats it could win.

It was the number of votes it could count.

Had Yabloko remained on the ballot, Russians would have had a legal way to vote for ending the war. Whatever the result — 2 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent — the state would have produced an official number showing how many citizens were still prepared to say “no” to the war from inside the Russian electoral system.

Not a demonstration in Berlin.

Not an émigré YouTube channel.

An official Russian election result.

Removing that choice from the ballot does something different from merely manipulating an election. It removes the alternative itself.

Then Shlosberg’s sentence demonstrates the possible price of expressing that alternative publicly.

That combination matters.

This is no longer just the old Russian authoritarianism

Authoritarian systems manipulate elections. They disqualify candidates, dominate television, pressure opponents and make sure the final result is safe.

A more totalitarian political logic goes one step further.

It does not merely insist that the opposition lose.

It insists that certain answers should not exist.

There is an important distinction here. Russia in 2026 is not a carbon copy of the totalitarian states of the twentieth century. Russians still have private property, businesses, families and considerable areas of ordinary private autonomy. People can choose where to eat, what car to buy and where to send their children to school.

But public politics is another matter.

War increasingly functions as a loyalty test. Elections increasingly resemble a ritual confirming power rather than a competition for it. Courts can turn political dissent into years behind bars. The state claims ever more authority to decide not only what citizens may do, but which description of reality is acceptable.

And eventually silence is not enough.

Public figures are expected to demonstrate loyalty.

That is the point at which this stops being interesting only to Russian liberals.

Why should Israel care?

An Israeli living in Haifa, Ashdod or Beersheba is entitled to ask a simple question: Why should I care whether........

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