Leftist protest leader Sergey Udaltsov is back! Aaaand he's gone.

For a brief while this week, leftist activist Sergey Udaltsov was formally registered as an official proxy for Communist Party presidential candidate Pavel Grudinin. A leading official in the party told Kommersant that Udaltsov’s name ended up on the list “due to a technical error.”

Communist Party officials vowed to boot Udaltsov from the proxy list, but he quickly withdrew his own name, reportedly agreeing that it would be “inappropriate” for him to represent Grudinin in an official capacity. Udaltsov says he will campaign for Grudinin in other ways.

In 2012, during Russia’s last presidential election, Udaltsov acted as a proxy for Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov. In 2014, Udaltsov was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for organizing civil unrest at a Moscow protest in May 2012. He finally went free in August 2017.