Russian presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin says he has managed to collect the necessary 100,000 signatures to be able to run against Vladimir Putin in March 2024. Thousands of Russians have shown their support for this politician with a 100 percent anti-war and anti-Putin program. Is such a candidacy difficult to imagine in Russia's current political context… unless it is manipulated behind the scenes by the Kremlin?
It was bitterly cold that day in Yakutsk, Siberia. On Sunday, January 21, the temperature dropped to -34 ° C, which did not stop dozens of people from lining up to sign. They came to support Boris Nadezhdine, an unlikely opposition candidate to Vladimir Putin in the Russian presidential election next March.
Similar scenes were filmed outside Boris Nadezhdine's campaign offices in Saint Petersburg, Krasnodar, Yekaterinburg and even Moscow and posted on social networks. “Thousands across the country come to deliver their signatures to Boris Nadejdine,” wrote the Moscow Times. “Pro-Nadejdine queues have also formed in front of Russian embassies in Israel, Serbia, Croatia and other countries where there is a Russian diaspora,” explains Will Kingston-Cox, Russia specialist at the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS). Verona.
Goal: 150,000 signatures
Signatures that this representative of the center-right Citizens' Initiative party needs. In fact, one of the first obstacles on the way to the Kremlin for any candidate who does not belong to a party represented in the Duma is to collect 100,000 supporters in order to then present them to the electoral commission.
Record winnings that affected the Moszkvaban visitor, Nadezhdin's head coach and politicians.
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Boris Nadejdine's campaign managers claimed on Tuesday January 23 that they had managed to collect the famous signatures… but would rather collect 150,000. You never know: “The commission has considerable power and some leeway to decide the validity of an application,” says Stephen Hall, a Russia specialist at the University of Bath.
This candidate, whose political program is to represent the opposite opinion to Vladimir Putin on all points, therefore prefers to make arrangements with a body that has been accused in the past of being a tool for eliminating opponents who are cumbersome for the Kremlin are. Because Boris Nadejdine is not content with criticizing the war. He described the anti-LGBT law as a “return to the Middle Ages”, spoke out in favor of relaxing abortion rules, criticized the Sino-Russian rapprochement initiated by Vladimir Putin and advocated strengthening relations with Western Europe.
Positions that have earned him the support of opponents of the leading Russian president. The anti-corruption collective founded by Alexei Navalny, the currently jailed harsh critic of Russian power, is for him. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the anti-Putin billionaire in exile, also spoke out in his support. Just like Ekaterina Dountsova, journalist and opponent of Vladimir Putin, whose own candidacy for the presidential election was rejected by the electoral commission precisely because of “formal deficiencies”.
The Kremlin in action?
What should Vladimir Putin worry about? Not necessarily, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday, January 24: This candidate “does not scare us.” Some of the Kremlin ruler's opponents also find the new champion of their cause too perfect to be honest. They are surprised that he was able to express his criticism of Vladimir Putin so freely and undisturbed. “Half of my friends refuse to give their signature to a candidate they call a Kremlin puppet,” Pavel Sychev, a member of Boris Nadezhdine’s campaign committee, said in an interview with The Moscow Times.
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This is a recurring problem in Russia, where the political landscape is blocked by Vladimir Putin. As soon as an opponent raises his head, especially during an election period, he is suspected of being secretly in the service of the Kremlin. There is even a specific term for the main so-called opposition parties, such as the communists and the ultra-nationalists of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia: it is the “systemic” opposition. These are groups that formally oppose Vladimir Putin, but support him in substance.
“In Russia we always wonder who the benefactor or protector of a candidate is, and in the case of Boris Nadezhdine it is not clear. “It seems to have come more or less out of nowhere,” emphasizes Stephen Hall.
However, the 60-year-old is not new to politics. In the early 2000s he was a Duma deputy. He was also an adviser to Boris Nemtsov, a former Russian prime minister and famous opponent who was assassinated in 2015. But since Vladimir Putin came to power, Boris Nadezhdine has been languishing in a local assembly in the Moscow region. This is not the political development of a political heavyweight.
However, skeptics have noted some biographical details that upset them. Notably, he was an election observer for Vladimir Putin during the 2012 presidential election. Most notably, “he was close to Sergei Kirienko, a political adviser to Vladimir Putin who is known as an outstanding election strategist,” notes Stephen Hall.
For this expert, this previous closeness could indicate that Boris Nadezhdine's candidacy was aimed at “getting a realistic picture of the popularity of liberal and anti-war ideas in Russia, since opinion polls are not the most reliable indicators.”
Too many disabilities?
Others prefer to give Boris Nadejdine the benefit of the doubt. First, “because his political career does not give the impression that he is someone who has benefited from the system put in place by Vladimir Putin,” notes Jeff Hawn, a Russia specialist at the London School of Economics.
Then he did not improvise as an opponent of Vladimir Putin on the eve of the presidential election. “He started criticizing him in 2020,” points out Will Kingston-Cox. At that time, he rejected the very important constitutional reform that would allow the president to remain in power for two consecutive terms. “And since 2022 he has been a sharp critic of the war in Ukraine, comparing in particular the major Russian offensive with an act of colonialism,” continues the ITSS expert from Verona.
Ultimately, despite his prestigious support and positions, Boris Nadejdine “has too many disadvantages to pose a real threat to the regime,” says Jeff Hawn. This politician “embodies all the values defended by Russia's rulers in the 1990s, and he is the heir to this generation that is largely discredited in the eyes of the majority of the Russian population,” concludes Jeff Hawn. For him, he is a candidate who will appeal to the big city intelligentsia and the diaspora, but ordinary Russians have very bad memories of the forced economic reforms of the 1990s.
This remote candidacy – or not – therefore represents a blessing for Vladimir Putin. The electoral risk for him is almost zero, and the presence of Boris Nadejdine gives the impression that the opposition to the war has a voice in this election. He may therefore be a very independent candidate, but someone from Vladimir Putin's entourage, like Sergei Kirienko, kindly encouraged him to run… nothing more.
What those in power may not have expected was that so many Russians lined up to sign, despite the cold and the risk of supporting an anti-war candidate. “That is probably the most important thing about these candidacies, because they are a clear and unusual expression of political discontent among the population,” said Will Kingston-Cox.
As things currently stand, it does not pose a threat to those in power because “these are more like acts of civil disobedience.” [manifester son opposition à la guerre est interdit, NDLR] only real disruptions to public order,” concludes Will Kingston-Cox.