Russia: Boris Nadezhdin, who opposes the war in Ukraine, wants to challenge Putin in elections

A lark or a real breath of fresh air? At 60, Boris Nadezhdin, a low-key veteran of Russian politics, marveled at his ability to mobilize crowds of Russians for peace in Ukraine and challenge Vladimir Putin in the March 15-17 presidential election. In a country where criticism of the Kremlin is punishable by prison, his candidacy represents hope for anonymous critics of the Russian regime looking for a way to express themselves without risking their freedom.

Boris Nadezhdin submitted “105,000 signatures” to the Central Election Commission on Wednesday, he said, France 24 reported. The threshold of 100,000 voters supporting him was a necessary step to confirm his candidacy. “Thank you very much to those who believed in us,” he told the press. “Nobody believed it a month ago, and some still doubted it two weeks ago.” The Election Commission is expected to make a decision within ten days. In addition to the number of signatures, it is necessary to respect the issue of the quota per administrative unit, recalls France 24.

“Disregard” by the Kremlin

In an interview with AFP in late January, he called the offensive in Ukraine a “nightmare” and denounced Vladimir Putin’s quarter-century of authoritarian drift. A rare thing in modern Russia. “My candidacy gives people a unique opportunity to legitimately protest current policies,” said the burly man with a short gray beard and close-cropped hair, whose name is related to the word “hope.”

His election promises: to stop hostilities, end the “militarization” of Russia and release “all political prisoners,” like opponent Alexei Navalny. Others before him went to jail for making such comments. So why was he spared? “I don’t know,” he said. But perhaps Putin “does not consider me a terrible threat,” his opponent admits.

The Kremlin does not hide its contempt. “We do not consider him as a competitor,” Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told the press.

In December, the Central Election Commission excluded from the presidential elections the pacifist candidate Ekaterina Duntsova, who had aroused real enthusiasm among some Russians.

Just an outlet for the dissatisfied?

But Muscovites who came to sign their support this week are wondering whether the Kremlin is using the candidacy to give vent to dissatisfaction. The man, little known outside a small liberal circle, said he spoke out in October because no better-known anti-Putin figure had taken the plunge, citing former Yekaterinburg mayor Yevgeny Roizman or the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and opposition newspaper leader. Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov. “To be honest, I thought someone would take the plunge,” he admitted to AFP.

Before this campaign, Boris Nadezhdin was limited to the role of a whipping boy for the fanatics of the storming of Ukraine inhabiting the scenery of TV channels. “I know it will be difficult to defeat Putin,” his opponent readily admits. However, he hopes for a good result, which could mark the “beginning of the end” of the era of the Russian president.

Career in the shadows

Over the past thirty years, Boris Nadezhdin has maintained a fairly private public career while serving as a consultant to more prominent figures.

With the exception of a short stint as a deputy of the lower house of parliament (2000-2003), his elective functions remained local. Even today he is the municipal representative of Dolgoprudny, a city located about twenty kilometers from Moscow, where he arrived in the late 1960s and where he still lives in a modest 1980s house.

Born in 1963 in Soviet Uzbekistan to a Jewish music teacher and a Russian physicist, he first followed in his father’s footsteps. “Fortunately or unfortunately, I sang like a frying pan (…), so from the very beginning I wanted to become a physicist,” he said in December*.

Part of the journey with Boris Nemtsov

Having graduated from physics, then jurisprudence, he received his first mandate of the municipal council in Dolgoprudny in 1990. According to his official biography, between 1997 and 1999 he collaborated with Boris Nemtsov, who later became a leading opponent of Vladimir Putin until his assassination in 2015. He also collaborated with Sergei Kiriyenko, then a liberal prime minister who has now become a key figure in the Kremlin.

He says he worked with the Russian president during his first term, but says he split with them in 2003, during the arrest of opponent and Yukos oil group boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky. “I have been criticizing Vladimir Putin for decades,” recalls Boris Nadezhdin, accusing him of “concentrating too much power in his hands.”