Boris Nadezhdin, the anti-war politician who sought to challenge Putin in Russia’s 2024 presidential election, has left for France
Boris Nadezhdin has left Russia for France, the politician revealed in a video posted to his Telegram channel showing him standing in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
“There’s good news: I’m alive and free. Unfortunately, not in Russia yet. I need to take a look around now, figure out how to live going forward. I’ll write about my plans later,” Nadezhdin said.
Nadezhdin planned to run in Russia’s 2024 presidential election as its only anti-war candidate and began collecting the signatures needed to register his candidacy. Lines formed outside his campaign offices in many regions of Russia as people waited to sign in support. The Central Election Commission ultimately denied him registration, citing an unacceptably high rate of invalid signatures among those collected.
Nadezhdin planned to run in Russia’s 2026 parliamentary elections, but Russia’s Justice Ministry declared him a “foreign agent” on July 10. Three days later, authorities drew up a report accusing him of displaying “extremist symbols” over a link to a video featuring a photograph of Alexey Navalny, and a court fined him 1,000 rubles. Both his “foreign agent” status and the report under the “extremist” statute closed off Nadezhdin’s path to the elections.
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