Russia bans anti-war candidate from election due to excessive popularity

Boris Nadezhdin said he would appeal to Russia's Supreme Court to overturn a decision that rejected about 9,000 signatures submitted by supporters. Photo: NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AFP via Getty Images

Russia has banned outspoken war opponent Vladimir Putin in Ukraine from running in next month's presidential election after he began to receive too much support.

Russia's Central Election Commission ruled that about 9,000 voters' 100,000 signatures of support that Boris Nadezhdin submitted to be included on the ballot were illegal and violated its rules.

The Dominance also denied Mr. Nadezhdin and his supporters another month to collect additional signatures. The Kremlin declined to comment.

Nadezhdin, 60, said he would appeal to Russia's Supreme Court to overturn the decision.

“We conducted the gathering openly and honestly. The whole world watched the queues at our headquarters and reception points,” he said. “You are not denying me, but tens of millions of people who are hoping for change.”

The Kremlin wants to use the presidential election scheduled for mid-March to show ordinary Russians' support for Putin's war in Ukraine, and analysts say the demonstration of support for Nadezhdin was wrong.

< p>Russians are prohibited from directly protesting the war, but they queued by the hundreds across the country in freezing conditions to sign their support for Mr Nadezhdin. Any form of anti-Kremlin activity is considered dangerous in Russia.

Ekaterina Duntsova, a Russian anti-war journalist, was also banned from standing in the elections. Photo: AP Photo/Alexander Zemlyanichenko

Ben Noble, an associate professor of Russian politics at University College London, said the Kremlin appeared to tolerate Mr. Nadezhdin's candidacy until he gained too much momentum and became the target of regime criticism.< /p>

“ This scared the authorities,” he said. «Mr Nadezhdin's popularity could have risen in the run-up to the March elections, undermining the Kremlin's rhetoric.»

Mr Nadezhdin campaigned against the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine, calling it a «fatal mistake», but he divided opinion among the opposition, with some accusing him of being a Kremlin-backed fake candidate used to siphon support from genuine opponents.

Mr Nadezhdin regularly appeared on Russian political television shows as a “loser” opposing the invasion of Ukraine, allowing Kremlin propagandists to verbally attack him. He was also an adviser to Sergei Kiriyenko when he was Russian Prime Minister in 1998.

Kiriyenko is now the Kremlin's deputy chief of staff and one of Putin's most trusted aides and political strategists.

John Foreman, a former British military attaché in Moscow, called Nadezhdin a «fake candidate» who abandoned a «fake election.»

“The Last Straw”

In 2018, Ksenia Sobchak, a socialite and goddaughter of Putin, was allegedly included in the presidential elections to distract the real opposition.< /p>

Yet despite concerns expressed by some about his legitimacy as a genuine opponent of the Kremlin, prominent supporters of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have backed Mr. Nadezhdin's candidacy.

Sergei Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School Top international studies in the US said that while Mr Nadezhdin was not an ideal candidate for Russia's liberal opposition and was doomed to fail, he was their last hope for a candidate and was tolerated because there was no alternative.

Mr. Nadezhdin was a candidate from the little-known Civil Initiative party. Ekaterina Duntsova, a Russian anti-war journalist, was also banned from standing in the elections.

Russian opposition media reported that the Kremlin wants to ensure an 80 percent victory for Putin in the elections. which would allow him to rule until at least 2030, 30 years after he first came to power.