When Russian authorities banned anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin from participating in this month’s presidential election, their message was clear: the Kremlin would no longer tolerate a competitive electoral landscape — even one in which Vladimir Putin’s victory was guaranteed.
If in past elections, the Kremlin allowed a few handpicked opposition candidates to be on the ballot, its current crackdown ahead of the March 15-17 presidential vote suggests that even unrealistic candidacies are viewed as a potential risk to the regime.
“My movement — the support that I received — completely destroyed the playbook that the Kremlin was expecting,” Nadezhdin told the Financial Times. “It turned out a lot of people were prepared to openly support a candidate who was advocating for peace and criticising Putin and his politics.”