The Communist Party, which has loyally supported the war in Ukraine, has become a target of the Kremlin.
In Russia, even supporting President Vladimir Putin's war policy is not necessarily enough as the security apparatus seeks to eradicate all opposition activity from the country.
This has been experienced firsthand by the Putin-loyal Communist Party, which has now found itself in the authorities' crosshairs, reports the Moscow Times.
The Communist Party is the second-largest party in Russia after Putin's United Russia, holding 57 seats in the 450-seat State Duma.
The party is part of the so-called systemic opposition that nominally opposes the regime but in practice supports Putin on all major issues.
In addition to the Communists, the systemic opposition is represented by the conservative and nationalistic Liberal Democratic Party (despite its name), the nominally social democratic A Just Russia party, and the self-proclaimed liberal New People party.
Before the war in Ukraine, the systemic opposition parties were allowed minor deviations from the official line, but nowadays they are expected to support Putin's line ever more unanimously.
"For those opposing the military actions, it may seem like there is no opposition at all, as all parties represented in parliament officially support the 'special military operation,'" summarized Stanislav Andreychuk of the Russian election monitoring organization Golos to the Moscow Times in April.
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