The veteran but little-known politician Boris Nadezhdin, who openly advocates for the end of the war with Ukraine, presented this Wednesday to the Central Electoral Commission of Russia a request to run as a candidate in the presidential elections of March 15, 16 and 17, accompanied by 105,000 signatures of support. The Commission has ten days to accept or reject his candidacy. If he does, he will face President Vladimir Putin, who is up for re-election and whose victory appears out of the question.
Nadezhdin is running for the Civic Initiative party, which is not represented in the Russian Parliament. For this reason, as established by Russian electoral law, to be a candidate he must be supported by at least 100,000 signatures and present them on January 31 as the last day.
Candidates without any party endorsement had to collect 300,000 signatures. This is the case of the current head of the Kremlin, who has chosen to present himself as an independent and not as a candidate for his United Russia party and whose team has collected three million, that is, ten times more than necessary. Last Monday the Electoral Commission confirmed Putin’s candidacy.
From January 31, the Commission has ten days to verify the authenticity of Nadezhdin’s signatures. After that period, it will make a statement and, in addition, announce the final list of candidates.
If Nadezhdin makes the cut, this liberal politician will become the fifth candidate in the presidential race.
In addition to Putin, the Commission has also given its approval to the candidates presented by three parties that do have deputies in the Duma (Lower House) and that do not need to present signatures. They are Leonid Slutski, leader of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party; the vice president of the Chamber Vladislav Davankov, who represents the New People formation; and deputy Nikolai Kharitonov, for the Communist Party.
Boris Nadezhdin, 60, is a veteran liberal politician but semi-unknown within Russia.
But with Putin’s most prominent opposition figures either in prison or outside Russia, the signature-gathering campaign has brought him sudden popularity in the past three weeks. For days thousands of people have lined up in the country’s main cities, especially in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, to give his team their information and endorse the candidacy.
The reason is that he is the only candidate who openly advocates ending the military campaign in Ukraine, ending military mobilization or applying an amnesty to all political prisoners in Russia, among whom is the best-known opposition figure. of the last decade: anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalni, currently in a penal colony in the Arctic, where he is serving various sentences totaling more than 30 years in prison.
Other prominent opponents close to Navalny’s positions have shown their support for Nadezhdin, among them the former oligarch and exiled oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The Kremlin has already talked about the potential candidate. His spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, said that he does not see Nadezhdin as a rival who poses an electoral danger to Putin.
On January 30, two candidates for the elections announced that they have finally decided not to run.
The conservative Democratic Party of Russia said that its possible candidate, Irina Sviridova, had not been able to gather the required endorsements.
Sergei Baburin, leader of the nationalist Russian National Union, said he was resigning shortly after submitting 100,000 signatures. “Now, in these difficult hours for our homeland, it is not the time to divide the forces of the people,” and he called on his followers to “unite around the national leader Putin.” Baburin was a presidential candidate in 2018 and received 1% of the vote.
