which the FSB then released to the public to discredit him as a radical attempting to undermine the governing administration. The Russian parliament subsequently voted to expel Gudkov for his open criticism of Putin, the first such expulsion since 1995. Merger and recent history (2012–present) The Ministry of Justice recognized the merger of the Republican Party and the People's Freedom Party (RPR–PARNAS) on 2 August 2012, after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the party should be restored in May of that year, and it supported the 2011–13 Russian protests, although since then the party has been mostly on the decline in influence among opposition circles. In August 2012 Boris Nemtsov attacked President Putin, saying he had used his power to acquire for his personal use palaces, yachts, planes and other property that really belonged to the state. Nemtsov said that Putin had been taking state property for a long time, and said he "thinks it all belongs to him.". During 2012 RPR-PARNAS participated in regional elections in Barnaul, winning 1 seat, and Saratov Oblast, Tuva, winning 2 seats. 2013 electoral successes Between 2011 and 2013, a series of protests had swept across Russia against electoral fraud after the 2011 Russian legislative election, and RPR-PARNAS had involved itself in the Moscow protest movement. Using its recently regained official party status, the party nominated a key leader of the protests and opposition figure Alexei Navalny for the September 2013 Moscow mayoral election, eliminating the need for Navalny to collect a huge number of signatures to be able to run. Navalny was president Vladimir Putin's top critic, and analysts agreed that he had specifically been released from imprisonment and allowed to run in the Kremlin-controlled election to give it a false sense of legitimacy. The pro-Putin candidate, Sergey Sobyanin of United Russia, even ordered the authorities to allow opposing parties to run against him, and personally requested that the Moscow municipal authorities helped Navalny collect the required number of signatures to run. Despite this, during the campaign Navalny got only a quarter as many TV mentions as his United Russia rival, mostly in the context of corruption charges against him. In July Navalny was only polling around 8% and Sobyanin 78%. However, Navalny rapidly gained support at the expense of Sobyanin and did surprisingly well in the election, winning 27% of the vote and nearly forcing a run off against