Anti-war Russian candidate barred from running against Putin

Anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin has been barred from running in Russia's presidential election next month, in a move that further purges the country's political landscape of opponents of Vladimir Putin.

The decision was made during a decision on Thursday by Russia's Central Election Committee (CEC), the body tasked with registering and verifying potential candidates.

According to the CEC, Nadezhdin collected only 95,587 legitimate signatures, about 5,000 less than the benchmark of 100,000.

Nadezhdin disputed the CEC's claims regarding the signatures and said he will appeal the refusal of his registration to the Supreme Court. He also said he would challenge the committee's regulations.

“No one has any doubt that hundreds of thousands of people actually signed for me. There is no doubt about it,” Nadezhdin said after the decision.

“We will appeal the regulations and the charging procedure itself”, he added.

But the move means he will join a host of anti-war activists in Ukraine to be isolated from the Russian political scene as Moscow prepares for a presidential election that international observers consider a mere formality.

Nadezhdin, a former State Duma deputy who intended to run as an independent candidate for the Civic Initiative party, has a firm anti-war stance and openly challenges Putin's policies.

He positions himself as the only presidential candidate willing to openly oppose the invasion of Ukraine.

Thousands of people have lined up in cities across Russia and other parts of Europe since early January to give their signatures in support of Nadezhdin, with volunteers collecting signatures from expatriates in cities from London and Paris to Georgia's capital Tbilisi .

But his campaign ran into difficulties when the CEC working group said it had identified more than 15% of invalid signatures on the documentation needed to run for president, exceeding the 5% allowed for registration.

He then failed in an attempt to move the meeting about his participation to Saturday. Nadezhdin argued that he needed more time to thoroughly examine the concerns and prepare his counterarguments.

On Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reacted to the commission's unanimous decision, saying: “There are certain criteria that a candidate must meet. What we heard today from the Central Electoral Commission is that there were a large number of failed signatures. Therefore, an important criterion was not met.”

Security fears

The decision will raise new concerns about the marginalization and targeting of political opponents in Russia, a feature of Putin's four terms as president that has intensified since he launched Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Nadezhdin last month told CNN that his family feared for his safety, in a reference to the marginalization of those who oppose Putin.

He said that after “a big discussion with my family,” he decided to run.

After considering the issue, “we decided this for my family and for my children, for my grandchildren, (it will be) better if Russia is a peaceful and free country.”

The Kremlin has tried to dismiss the relevance of Nadezhdin's expected candidacy in recent weeks, with Peskov telling journalists last month: “We do not consider him a rival.”

But his efforts attracted attention. Nadezhdin announced that he delivered 105,000 signatures to the CEC last month – the maximum allowed by law – for his official candidacy.

Speaking to Russian independent news channel RTVI last week, Nadezhdin said that if he won he would not send Putin to face a war crimes tribunal and insisted he would receive a “government pension and protection”.

The Kremlin leader is running for a fifth term as Russia's president in next month's elections. There are four candidates on the official ballot – Putin, Vladislav Davankov, Nikolai Kharitonov and Leonid Slutsky.

But Putin is expected to secure a mandate that will keep him in office until 2030; he is now the longest-serving Russian ruler since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

In his 24 years as a dominant figure in Russian politics, Putin has marginalized his political opponents and muzzled the country's press.

Russia's tightly managed democracy allows for little real political competition, and presidential elections have essentially become plebiscites demonstrating popular approval of Putin.

In December, another independent candidate who spoke out openly against the war in Ukraine, Yekaterina Duntsova, was rejected by the CEC, due to errors alleged in her campaign group's registration documents.

Later, Duntsova appealed to people to support Nadezhdin's candidacy.

In January, shortly after expressing her intention to create her own political party, Duntsova reported being briefly detained by traffic police and subjected to random drug tests.

Opponents of the Kremlin have often alleged the fabrication of criminal charges through planted drugs.