Independent Russian presidential candidate Yekaterina Duntsova will not be allowed to appear on the ballot in the March 2024 election after the Central Election Commission (CEC) rejected her nomination papers.
Duntsova, 40, a journalist and local politician from the Tver region northwest of Moscow, announced her candidacy for the presidency in November on a pro-peace and pro-democracy platform.
This week she secured the support of an initiative group of more than 500 supporters, as is required for candidates who are not affiliated with a political party.
At a meeting on Saturday, the Central Election Commission (CEC) rejected her documents, saying it found over 100 typos and other errors, the Ostorozhno Novosti Telegram news channel reported.
“We have carefully studied the documents and have the impression that they were filled out in a hurry and without adhering to legal standards,” the BBC Russian service quoted CEC member Yevgeny Shevchenko as saying at the commission meeting.
If the CEC had accepted their documents, it would have had to collect 300,000 individual voter signatures from at least 40 regions of Russia to appear on the ballot.
Following the meeting, Duntsova said she planned to appeal the commission's decision in court and ask the liberal Yabloko party to nominate her as a candidate.
“I want us all to believe that we can take advantage of another chance. Don’t lose faith, don’t lose hope,” she said.
Duntsova's campaign team has experienced several instances of pressure since announcing her presidential candidacy.
Shortly after announcing her campaign, she was called to the prosecutor's office to discuss her campaign and her stance on Russia's actions in Ukraine.
According to the women's activist group Myagkaya Sila (Soft Power), one of Duntsova's supporters was arrested in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk after she returned from the nomination meeting. The supporter, who is also a member of Myagkaya Sila, was reportedly accused of falsely filing a complaint against a police officer.
She also faced speculation that she could be a Kremlin-backed spoiler candidate.
State news agency RIA Novosti this week claimed without evidence that Duntsova had the financial support of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch turned Kremlin critic in exile.
President Putin, 71, is expected to easily win re-election to a fifth term in the March 2024 vote after eliminating virtually all opposition forces, thereby remaining in power until at least 2030.
“Ekaterina Sergeyevna, you are a young woman, you still have everything ahead of you. Any minus can always be converted into a plus. “Any experience is still experience,” CEC head Ella Pamfilova told Duntsova at the end of Saturday’s meeting.