His surname is derived from the Russian word for hope – and for hundreds of thousands of war opponents in Russia, that is, improbably, exactly what he has become.
Boris B. Nadezhdin is the only candidate running on an anti-war platform with a chance of running against President Vladimir V. Putin in Russia's presidential election in March. Anti-war Russians have rushed to sign his official petition inside and outside the country, hoping to produce enough signatures by Jan. 31 to allow him to successfully enter the race.
They braved sub-zero temperatures in the Siberian city of Yakutsk. They meandered down the block in Yekaterinburg. They sheltered in place in St. Petersburg to stay warm and flocked to outposts in Berlin, Istanbul and Tbilisi, Georgia.
They know election officials may bar Mr. Nadezhdin from the election, and if he is allowed to run, they know he will never win. They do not care.
“Boris Nadezhdin is our collective 'no,'” said Lyosha Popov, a 25-year-old who is collecting signatures for Mr. Nadezhdin in Yakutsk, south of the Arctic Circle. “This is simply our protest, our form of protest, so that we can somehow show that we are against all this.”
Grassroots mobilization in an authoritarian country where national elections have long been a Potemkin affair has energized a Russian opposition movement that has been all but wiped out: its most promising leaders exiled, jailed or killed in a sweeping crackdown over disagreements, that escalated with the war.
With protests generally banned in Russia and criticism of the military forbidden, the long lines to support Mr. Nadezhdin's candidacy have offered anti-war Russians a rare public community with like-minded people, whose voices have been cast in a wave of hurrah-jungos and state-run for nearly two years Brutality perishes years.
Many of them don't particularly know or care about Mr. Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old physicist who was a member of the Russian parliament from 1999 to 2003 and who openly admits that he has the charisma of anti-Kremlin Kremlin knights like Aleksei A. missing . Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader.
But with a draconian censorship law suppressing criticism of the war, Nadezhdin's supporters see his support as the only legal way in Russia to demonstrate their opposition to Putin's invasion of Ukraine. And they like what the candidate says – about the conflict that is driving Russia into the depths; on the need to free political prisoners, bring the troops home and make peace with Ukraine; that Russia's anti-gay laws are “idiotic.”
“The purpose of my participation is to counter Putin’s approach, which is leading the country into a dead end, a rut of authoritarianism, militarization and isolation,” Mr. Nadezhdin said in a written response to questions from The New York Times.
“The more votes a candidate receives against Putin's actions and the 'special military operation,' the greater the chances for peace and change in Russia,” he added, using the Kremlin's term for the war to avoid running afoul of Russian law to advise.
He has dismissed questions about his safety, pointing out in a YouTube appearance last week that the “tastiest and sweetest years of my life are already in the past.”
The Kremlin tightly controls the electoral process to ensure that Putin inevitably emerges victorious, but also allows non-threatening opponents to run – to create a veneer of legitimacy, boost voter turnout and provide an outlet for Russians opposed to his rule to give vent to their dissatisfaction. So far, 11 people, including Mr. Nadezhdin and Mr. Putin, have been allowed To as potential candidates and are collecting signatures.
Many of Mr. Nadezhdin's new supporters accept that he may have initially been seen as just a useful tool for the Kremlin – a 1990s liberal with a folksy, grandpa vibe willing to play the state's game.
Particularly suspicious is his work in the 1990s as an adviser to Sergei V. Kiriyenko, a prime minister under President Boris N. Yeltsin who is now the top Kremlin official responsible for overseeing domestic policy.
Skeptics also point to Mr. Nadezhdin's presence on state television, where he has contributed to the illusion of open debate by acting as a symbolic liberal voice shouted down by pro-Putin propagandists. Opposition figures like Mr. Navalny, whom the Kremlin sees as a real threat, have long been banned from appearing, let alone running for president.
Mr. Nadezhdin countered that if he were a puppet of the Kremlin, he would not fight for signatures and money, nor would the largest state television channel have removed his name from its list of presidential candidates.
His supporters carry on anyway.
“He could well turn out to be a decorative candidate, but if so, then you get the feeling that not everything went according to plan,” said Tatyana Semyonova, a 32-year-old programmer who appeared in a crowded Berlin courtyard to give her name to sign.
She said she had no particular affinity for Mr. Nadezhdin but was signing in protest.
Pavel Laptev, a 37-year-old designer who stood in line next to Ms. Semyonova, said even the smallest chance to make a change should not be missed. “Even if he's a decorative candidate, once he has all this power, he might decide he's not so decorative,” he said.
The unexpected surge in support for Mr. Nadezhdin has left the Kremlin's political maestros with a thorny question in the first presidential election since Mr. Putin began his invasion: Will they allow an anti-war candidate of any stripe to stand for election?
“I will be surprised, surprised but delighted when I see you on the ballot,” Ekaterina Schulmann, a Berlin-based Russian political scientist, told Mr. Nadezhdin during a YouTube show last week. “I am not convinced that our political management, at this stage of its development, its evolution, can afford such risks.”
Mr. Nadezhdin's campaign says it has far exceeded the required total of 100,000 signatures, but a candidate is only allowed to submit a maximum of 2,500 signatures from a single Russian region. On Friday, his campaign said it was on track to collect enough signatures from regions within Russia and did not need signatures from abroad.
But even if Mr. Nadezhdin collects enough signatures, Russian authorities could find a way to disqualify him. The long, visible support lines, he said, would make this more difficult.
Many Russian opponents of the war initially coalesced around Ekaterina S. Duntsova, a little-known former television journalist and local politician who launched a campaign in November and quickly rose to fame. But the Central Election Commission rejected her candidacy application because of what she called minor errors in her documents.
She has been supporting Mr. Nadezhdin ever since.
Members of Mr Navalny's team, including his wife, have also publicly supported the former lawmaker. So did one of Russia's most famous rock stars, Yuri Shevchuk, and another influential exiled opposition activist, Maxim Katz.
In Yakutsk, a cold city in eastern Siberia, the temperature was minus 45 degrees Fahrenheit when Mr. Popov, the campaign manager there, began collecting signatures. Eventually the weather got warmer and the crowds grew.
Few places downtown would allow Mr. Popov to build a position in support of an anti-Putin candidate. But he persuaded a mall to give the store a space in a hallway where people can sign their names at a school desk and folding table.
“If people don’t know Boris Nadezhdin, I can tell them who he is,” Mr. Popov said. But he emphasizes that he is not there because of Mr. Nadezhdin. “I’m collecting signatures against Putin here,” he tells people. “We are collecting signatures against Putin, yes, against military actions.”
Those who sign must provide their full name and passport details – effectively a ready-made list of Russians who oppose the war – raising fears of reprisals.
But that hasn't deterred Karen Danielyan, a 20-year-old from Tver, about 100 miles northwest of Moscow, whose entire adult life so far has been spent at war with Russia. “The fear that this will continue is much stronger and more serious than the fear that they will do something to me because I work as a signature collector,” he said.
Mr. Nadezhdin portrays himself as an unremarkable politician who decided to run for office out of “desperation” and happened to find himself at the head of a movement.
“But, comrades, I have one quality – I love my family and my country infinitely,” he said last week in a YouTube appearance alongside Ms. Schulmann, the political analyst. “I firmly believe that Russia is no worse than any other country and can achieve tremendous results with the help of democracy, elections and the will of the people.”
Ms. Schulmann told him he would be judged by what happens to the people who signed his petition.
“I won’t betray anyone,” he said. “I will fight.”