Citizens’ Initiative presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin arrives at the Central Election Commission in Moscow on January 31, 2024, to submit signatures collected in support of his candidacy.
Vera Savina | Afp | Getty Images
During President Vladimir Putin’s 24 years in power, systemic opposition has been wiped out in Russia, with the Kremlin’s political opponents either imprisoned or in self-imposed exile or, in some circumstances, even dead.
But in Boris Nadezhdin, a challenger to Putin’s long reign has emerged from an unlikely place – within Russia’s existing political establishment.
Representing the platform of peace with Ukraine, friendly and cooperative global relations and fair elections, as well as a fairer civil society and a smaller state, Nadezhdin filed his bid for the presidency on Wednesday.
The Kremlin has tried to dismiss Nadezhdin’s potential to disrupt an election whose victory is seen as a done deal for Putin. Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov told CNBC on Thursday: “We are not inclined to exaggerate the level of support for Mr. Nadezhdin.”
Nonetheless, the fact that Nadezhdin is attempting to run for election on an anti-war platform at all – and has received some public support – shows that there is public interest in his views, and that is likely to make the Kremlin nervous about his political legacy and his future rests on a victory in Ukraine.
Russian political analysts point out that the 60-year-old Nadezhdin is not a political outsider or upstart, but rather part of Russia’s political establishment – a former lawmaker who was a member of political parties that supported Putin’s leadership early in his political career over two decades ago .
His recent foray into frontline politics and his attempt to run for the presidential election was apparently tolerated by Russia’s political leadership and domestic policymakers, despite the concerns of some pro-Kremlin activists, with Nadezhdin previously considered a member of the system opposition, which lends credit to Russia’s largely autocratic leadership a veil of political plurality and legitimacy.
But Nadezhdin’s recent growing popularity and prominence has changed that, political analysts say, and he now poses a challenge and a dilemma for the Kremlin as the election approaches.
“He was always anti-war and critical, but he played by the rules and respected the rules, so he didn’t dare.” [challenge the political status quo]”He was absolutely part of the systemic opposition … but he decided to go further,” Russian political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya told CNBC on Thursday.
“[As soon as] “He believed that thousands of people or even hundreds of thousands were behind him and decided to play a different game,” said Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and founder of the analytics firm R.Politics.
“And the domestic political supervisors don’t like it at all. For them it’s a game, it’s a headache and a problem. Nadezhdin has now become a challenge,” she said.
Skating on thin ice?
Nadezhdin is a well-known face in Russia. A former State Duma deputy, he made a name for himself on popular TV chat shows where he became known for his critical views on Russia’s war against Ukraine or what Moscow calls a “special military operation.” But analysts note that he has been careful to comply with recent laws that make “discrediting” the armed forces a criminal offense that can result in prison sentences.
Nadezhdin is very popular among parts of the Russian public and was nominated for election late last year by the center-right Citizens’ Initiative party.
Founded a little over ten years ago, the party states in its manifesto that “its goal is for the state to be the servant of man, not his master” and that it wants to restore individual freedoms in Russia, such as freedom of expression and that Right to protest and revive relations with the West. Nadezhdin said in interviews that he would end the war with Ukraine, calling the war a “fatal mistake.”
Those are bold words in Russia, and Nadezhdin himself has said he’s not sure why he hasn’t been arrested yet for his views.
Many of his supporters lined up in freezing temperatures to show their support and, above all, their signatures in support of his candidacy for the March 15-17 election.
Candidates representing political parties in Russia must collect at least 100,000 signatures from at least 40 regions of Russia to be considered as election candidates. Putin, who ran as an independent (and needed at least 300,000 signatures), reportedly collected over 3.5 million signatures.
People line up to sign anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin’s presidential candidacy. It is considered impossible that Nadezhdin could win the upcoming presidential election in Russia. However, the war opponent’s candidacy met with unexpected support from many Russians.
Picture Alliance | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Surrounded by his supporters and a crowd of press members as he delivered his bid to the Central Election Commission this week, Nadezhdin said 105,000 signatures had been submitted, although just over 200,000 had been collected, according to his campaign website. His campaign decided not to submit signatures collected from Russian citizens abroad for fear they would be rejected.
The Central Election Commission, which oversees the electoral processes in Russia, will now check the legitimacy of these signatures. Given recent expressions of support for Nadezhdin, that could prove awkward for the Kremlin, and there are concerns that electoral authorities could find fault with a significant number of those signatures, meaning he is off the ballot on a technicality – whether real or not could be excluded from running in the election.
Stanovaya said this was a likely scenario: “It’s really difficult for me to imagine that Nadezhdin would be allowed to run in the election, that would be absolutely strange.” Stanovaya considered it likely that the Central Election Commission would use some of the signatures collected by Nadezhdin would not recognize.
CNBC was unable to reach the CEC for a response to comment.
András Tóth-Czifra, a fellow in the Eurasia program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told CNBC that the Kremlin must now weigh the risks of publishing Nadezhdin’s name on the ballet sheet and the potential for a better-than-expected performance or rejecting his candidacy , before real reputational damage can occur – even if one knows that abandoning Nadezhdin’s candidacy could also stir up resentment.
“Many have speculated, and I think this is true, that the original idea of having him run as a candidate and collecting signatures and expressing the slightly anti-war message in his campaign was to show how little support there was Position enjoys “today’s Russia,” said Tóth-Czifra.
Boris Nadezhdin, Citizens’ Initiative candidate for the 2024 Russian presidential election, brought 105,000 signatures to the polling station in Moscow, Russia, on January 31, 2024.
Boris Nadezhdin Press Service/Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images
“The question now is how risky the Kremlin political technologists think it is to allow this to continue and Nadezhdin to be on the ballot,” he told CNBC on Thursday.
“I’m pretty sure the Kremlin will weigh these risks over the course of the week as the Central Election Commission verifies the signatures… There are arguments for letting Naezhdin run and there are arguments for removing him from the ballot. There are risks associated with that.” “There is a risk of letting him run and there is a risk of removing him from the election,” said Tóth-Czifra.
“From what we’ve seen so far, I think the Kremlin probably feels that the risks associated with removing him from the ballot are lower than the risks associated with keeping him on the ballot “,” he added, especially given the Kremlin’s perception of risk is likely to be heightened in wartime.
“I’m pretty sure there are already people in the Kremlin who think he’s already gone too far,” Tóth-Czifra said.
Even if Nadezhdin is allowed to run, there are no illusions that he can win the election in a country where Putin’s approval ratings remain remarkably high, the pro-Putin media dominates and where political opponents are subject to extensive smear campaigns.
Kremlin press secretary Peskov told CNBC last fall that Russian “society is consolidating around the president” and that the Kremlin was confident Putin would win another term.
Stanovaya said Nadezhdin now risks running afoul of Russian authorities because he has openly challenged his longstanding leadership.
“He’s taking a lot of risks now, and I’m pretty sure that the Kremlin’s domestic policy overseers, who know Nadezhdin very well, are now thinking about how to deal with this and signal to Nadezhdin that he either stops and…” Rowing, actually He goes backwards, otherwise he’ll have problems.”
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2024-02-02 06:04:39
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