Russians opposed to Vladimir Putin for years have been inspired by telegenic anti-corruption campaigners willing to risk their freedom and even their lives to expose the Kremlin’s crimes.
Now, after two years of war and with most opposition figures either in jail, in exile or dead, they have been left with Boris Nadezhdin.
As the only anti-war candidate in a highly controlled presidential contest, the little-known, portly, goatee-bearded 60 year-old has shot from obscurity to become a release valve for Russians inside and outside the country who are frustrated by the war in Ukraine and the regime.
An amiable if bumbling former deputy in the Duma, or legislative assembly, Nadezhdin has spent the past three decades in politics, but largely toiled in obscurity. Sceptics say he is a Kremlin project designed to give false legitimacy to the upcoming presidential vote and distract the opposition-minded portion of the population.
Yet his candidacy has struck a nerve.
This week, with the deadline approaching for Nadezhdin to collect the necessary 100,000 signatures to appear on the ballot, social media posts have shown thousands of Russians queueing to give their signatures in major cities such as Moscow, St Petersburg, and Ekaterinburg. Supporters were also seen turning out in central Russia’s Bashkortostan and the Arctic republic of Yakutia, where a handful of fans lined up in the minus-45-degree cold.
“The enthusiasm that we are witnessing shows what I think was pretty clear without Nadezhdin’s campaign: there are a significant number of people who are dissatisfied with the current government and oppose the war, and are waiting for the smallest opportunity for action,” said Greg Yudin, professor of political philosophy at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences.
“Whenever they get even a slight opportunity to manifest themselves, especially in a legal way, they immediately seize upon this opportunity.”
The Kremlin has strictly enforced a ban on any demonstrations, arresting anyone who displays an anti-war symbol — including a blank placard — in a public place. But citizens are legally allowed to gather to fill out signatures for Nadezhdin’s campaign. That means the queues of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people represent some of the biggest unsanctioned public gatherings since the early days of the war.
Outside Russia, supporters were busy gathering names all the way from a beauty salon in Phuket to a coffee shop in Austin, Texas. In Riga, organisers collected signatures inside a shabby, defunct nightclub, where the underground atmosphere matched the mood of the operation.
“It’s almost like we’re doing clandestine politics,” joked Anastasia, one of the organisers in Riga. Nadezhdin later announced he would only be submitting signatures gathered inside Russia, to help prevent authorities from finding a reason to kick him off the ballot.
“Russians rarely get to feel like they can influence something, and that they are not alone in all this,” said Mikhail Petrov, 24, who helped collect 300 signatures this week inside a Buenos Aires yoga studio.
Political analysts said it was impossible to imagine that Nadezhdin’s campaign had not been sanctioned in some way by the Kremlin, which has long allowed hand-selected opposition candidates and parties to campaign. This serves to reinforce the perceived legitimacy of the election and Putin’s own supreme support.
Still, Nadezhdin’s platform contrasts sharply with the government. A onetime associate of Boris Nemtsov, a prominent critic of Putin’s first war in Ukraine who was murdered outside the Kremlin, Nadezhdin has vowed to begin negotiating a ceasefire in Ukraine and to end Russia’s military mobilisation.
“From the very beginning I opposed the ‘special military operation’ and said that this was a fatal mistake and a catastrophic decision, on all Russian television channels, until I was turned off,” Nadezhdin told Current Time TV, a station created by Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, in an interview this month.
A manifesto on Nadezhdin’s website declares him to be a “principled opponent of the policies of the current president”, alleging that Putin “sees the world from the past and is dragging Russia into the past”.
He has also pledged to release all political prisoners, and has spoken out against Russia’s new anti-LGBT laws and abortion restrictions as “complete nonsense”, saying they heralded a return to the Middle Ages.
On social media, leaders of the usually fractured opposition — ranging from the once-jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky to the Anti-Corruption Fund of currently jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny — have all endorsed his candidacy rather than urging supporters to boycott the election.
Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist who interviewed Nadezhdin in a widely-viewed livestream this week, said the candidate did not resemble most breakout politicians. But still, she said, the grassroots enthusiasm for his candidacy posed a problem for the Kremlin by cutting into perceptions of widespread support for Putin.
“They can stop him, and I think they will, but they’ve created some headache for themselves,” Schulmann said. “This image of those lines in the snow, you can’t delete that. You can’t unsee that. And of course there are no lines to sign up for the president.”
According a December poll by the Levada Center, Putin’s approval rating currently stands at 83 per cent. However, political analysts have urged caution about those numbers, given the high level of censorship and political repression.
On Telegram, Nadezhdin has played up his glass-half-full, everyman character, strumming a cheerful folk duet on the guitar with his daughter — he comes from a long line of musicians — and issuing an early-morning message with his cup of coffee. “Of course our country has a future — and it’s beautiful,” he said.
The name Nadezhdin in Russian quite literally stems from the word “hope”.
“I don’t have any heroic talents, some kind of charisma . . . I’m not a two-metre handsome guy, I’m not [the late Boris] Nemtsov, I’m not Alexei Navalny,” Nadezhdin said in his livestream this week.
Still, he said, there was something to recommend him. “I endlessly believe that Russia is definitely no worse than any other country, which can achieve amazing results with the help of democracy, elections and the will of the people,” Nadezhdin declared. “Let’s breathe some optimism.”
Among a certain segment of the population, the message has resonated.
“Every day, I read the comments, look at the photos and videos from the queues at the campaign headquarters, and every time tears of joy and pride come to my eyes! This is unbelievable!” wrote one Telegram user named Valeria under a Nadezhdin post.
“Where were all you decent people before?” another user asked.
In Moscow, Ekaterina Mareeva, 29, who works for an online educational platform, said she had stood in a queue of about 100 mostly young people outside Nadezhdin’s headquarters in the Moscow district of Chistye Prudy.
The gathering, she said, had the mood of a “summer camp”. “I had mixed feelings,” she explained. “On the one hand, it’s like going into a fight that you don’t have the slightest chance of winning. On the other hand, you see it’s mainly our [younger] generation, which gives me hope that time will pass and do its job.”
Despite suspicions that it has been sanctioned by the Kremlin, his campaign has given Russians dissatisfied with the regime and war a glimmer of optimism in an otherwise bleak and monolithic political landscape.
“Nadezhdin, perhaps, may not be a perfect politician. But what matters here is not his personality, but what he says,” said Oleg Ignatov, a senior Russia analyst with Crisis Group, a think-tank. “People want . . . an ability to vote for an alternative candidate.”
Asked by a reporter on Wednesday whether Putin considered Nadezhdin a political threat, the president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We do not consider him a rival. Not at all.”
Yet political analysts said it was unlikely the Kremlin would allow Nadezhdin’s popularity to progress too far. Authorities could refuse to put him on the ballot, by deeming some of his signatures invalid, they said, or find some other means to influence him, such as the threat of prison.
Asked by Schulmann whether he was worried about his personal safety or freedom, Nadezhdin claimed he was prepared for any fate.
“The most delicious and sweet years of my life are already in the past,” Nadezhdin said. “I’m ready for anything.”
