XAVIER COLÁS Moscow
Moscow
Updated Thursday, February 8, 2024-11:28
He was the only pacifist presidential candidate, but Russians will not be able to vote for him. Boris Nadezhdin announced today, Thursday, that the Central Election Commission (CEC) prohibits him from participating in the March elections. The current president, Vladimir Putin, is assumed to win easily, but Nadezhdin has announced that he will appeal to the Supreme Court: "Participating in the presidential elections in [March] 2024 is the most important political decision of my life. I will not resign."
The CEC had previously said it had found flaws, typos and erroneous data in the signatures that Nadezhdin and his allies had collected in support of his candidacy. The agency even suggested that some of the alleged signatures were from dead people.
Nadezhdin defends the cleanliness of his process
: "I collected more than 200,000 signatures throughout Russia. We carried out the collection openly and honestly: the queues at our headquarters and at the collection points were seen all over the world."
But Nadezhdin had surprised some analysts with his scathing criticism of the war. The Kremlin avoids that word, calling its invasion a "special military operation" in Ukraine. Nadezhdin, a seasoned television talk show host, calls it "a fatal mistake." He never advocated returning territories but proclaimed that he would attempt to end the fighting through negotiations.
As a candidate nominated by a political party, Nadezhdin needed to collect 100,000 signatures in at least 40 Russian regions in order to run in the elections, which take place between March 15 and 17. The Kremlin has signaled that it does not see Nadezhdin as a serious rival to Putin.
Putin, who has chosen to run as an independent candidate and not as a contender for the ruling United Russia party, has already collected more than 3.5 million signatures. At 71, he has been in power as president or prime minister since late 1999.