Boris Nadezhdin, the political UFO who challenges Putin

It was bitterly cold that day in Yakutsk, Siberia. The thermometer dropped to -34°C on Sunday, January 21, which did not stop dozens of people from lining up to sign. He came to support Boris Nadezhdin, an unlikely opposition candidate to Vladimir Putin in the Russian presidential election next March.

Similar scenes were filmed and posted on social networks in front of Boris Nadezhdin’s campaign office in St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Yekaterinburg and Moscow. The Moscow Times noted, “Thousands of people across the country are flocking to Boris Nadezhdin to bring their signatures.” “Pro-Nadezhdin queues have formed—even in front of Russian embassies in Israel, Serbia, Croatia and other countries with a Russian diaspora,” explained Will Kingston-Cox, a Russia expert at the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS). is Verona.

The goal is 150,000 signatures

Signatures needed by this representative of the center-right Civic Initiative party. Indeed, one of the first hurdles on the way to the Kremlin for any candidate not affiliated with a party represented in the Duma is to gather 100,000 endorsements and then submit to the Election Commission.

Boris Nadezhdin’s campaign managers claimed that, on Tuesday, January 23, they managed to collect the famous signatures… but would prefer to collect 150,000. You never know: “There is considerable power and a certain margin of maneuver to decide on the validity of the commission. An application,” says Stephen Hall, a Russia expert at the University of Bath.

The candidate, whose political platform includes taking the opposite view of Vladimir Putin on everything, thus prefers to be careful with a body accused in the past of being a means of getting rid of opponents who are a burden to the Kremlin. Because Boris Nadezhdin is not content to criticize the war. He described anti-LGBT laws as a “return to the Middle Ages”, called for a relaxation of regulations on abortion and criticized Sino-Russian relations initiated by Vladimir Putin while advocating stronger ties with Western Europe.

A position that has earned him the support of prominent Russian presidential opponents. An anti-corruption group founded by Alexei Navalny, a staunch critic of Russian power currently in prison, is in favor. Exiled anti-Putin billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky also spoke in his favor. Like Ekaterina Dontsova, the journalist and opponent of Vladimir Putin, who just saw her candidacy for the presidential election rejected by the election commission for “formal flaws”.

Is the Kremlin in action?

What should Vladimir Putin be worried about? Not necessarily, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared on Wednesday, January 24: This candidate “doesn’t scare us”. Even some opponents of the Kremlin master consider the new champion of his cause too fair to be honest. They are amazed that they can express themselves so freely to criticize Vladimir Putin without being harassed. “Half of my friends refused to give their signatures to a candidate described as a puppet of the Kremlin,” says Pavel Sychev, a member of Boris Nadezhdin’s campaign committee, interviewed by the Moscow Times.

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This is a recurring problem in Russia, where the political landscape is closed by Vladimir Putin. As soon as a rival rears its head, especially during an election period, it is suspected of being secretly in the Kremlin’s pay. There is also a specific term for the main so-called opposition parties, such as the Communists and the ultranationalists of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia: they are “organized” opposition. These are groups that oppose Vladimir Putin in form, but support him in substance.

“In Russia, we always wonder who is the beneficiary or protector of a candidate, and in the case of Boris Nadezhdin, it is not clear. He seems to have come out of nowhere,” underlines Stephen Hall.

However, this sixty-year-old is not new to politics. In the early 2000s, he was a Duma deputy. He was also an advisor to former Russian Prime Minister and prominent dissident Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in 2015. But since Vladimir Putin came to power, Boris Nadezhdin has been vegetating in the local assembly of the Moscow region. This is not the political path of a political heavyweight.

However, skeptics have noted some biographical details that disturb them. He was an election observer specifically for Vladimir Putin during the 2012 presidential election. Above all, “he was close to Vladimir Putin’s political adviser Sergei Kiriyenko, who was renowned as an excellent electoral strategist”, notes Stephen Hall.

For this expert, this proximity to the past suggests that Boris Nadezhdin’s candidacy was “shaped to get a real picture of the popularity of liberal and anti-war ideas in Russia, because opinion polls are not the most reliable indicators”.

Too many disabilities?

Others prefer to give Boris Nadezhdin the benefit of the doubt. First, “because his political career does not give the impression that he is a beneficiary of the system put in place by Vladimir Putin,” notes Jeff Hohn, a Russia expert at the London School of Economics. .

Then, he did not reform as an opponent of Vladimir Putin on the eve of the presidential election. “They started criticizing it in 2020,” Will Kingston-Cox underlines. At the time, he opposed a very important constitutional amendment that allowed the president to serve more than two consecutive terms. “And since 2022, he has been a fierce critic of the war in Ukraine, especially equating the great Russian offensive with an act of colonialism,” the ITSS Verona expert continues.

Finally, despite his prestigious support and his position, Boris Nadezhdin has “too many handicaps to present a real threat to the regime”, believes Jeff Hone. This politician “embodies all the values ​​defended by the men in power in Russia in the 1990s, and is the heir of this generation that is disgraced in the eyes of the majority of the Russian population,” sums up Jeff Hohn. For him, he is a candidate who will please the intellectuals of the big cities and the diaspora, but ordinary Russians have very bad memories of the forced economic reforms of the 1990s.

This remote-controlled candidacy – or not – therefore represents a boon for Vladimir Putin. The electoral risk for them is almost nil, and the presence of Boris Nadezhdin gives the impression that this election is the voice of opposition to the war. So he’s probably a very independent candidate, but who someone in Vladimir Putin’s entourage, like Sergei Kirienko, kindly encouraged to run… nothing more.

What those in power probably did not expect were all the Russians, despite the cold and the risk of supporting an anti-war candidate, to provide their signatures. “That’s probably the most important thing about this candidacy, because there are clear and unusual expressions of political discontent among this population,” Will Kingston-Cox said.

In its current state, this is not alarming to those in power because “these are more acts of civil disobedience (prohibition of war, editor’s note) than actual disturbances of public order”, summarizes Will Kingston-Cox.