Initial results of Russian parliamentary elections are known: Yabloko will contest the results.

Grigory Yavlinsky, the leader of the Yabloko opposition party’s electoral list, said his party will contest the results of Sunday’s parliamentary elections that saw the ruling United Russia party balancing on the verge of the 50-percent mark, Ria Novosti writes.

Yabloko chairman Sergei Mitrokhin told journalists the party disagreed with the preliminary results, which gave Yabloko a mere 3.16 percent, far from the 7-percent election threshold or the five-percent mark that would give it one seat in the State Duma.

 “Despite gross violations throughout the country, despite ballot stuffing, falsifications, we see that on the whole, Yabloko’s results are rather positive,” he said, however.

The elections were punctuated by thousands of claims of violations both from independent observers and the government, with the Interior Ministry alone announcing it had received and would investigate more than 1,000 complaints of irregularities.

Now that Yabloko has cleared the 3-percent mark, it will not have to pay for airtime on television during next elections, in line with the Russian law.

With 91.49 percent of the election protocols from polling places counted, the ruling United Russia party garnered 49.79 percent, going down after clearing the psychologically important 50-percent mark several times, and their closest rival, the Communist Party (KPRF), 19.16 percent.