&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Who is Boris Nadezhdin? Putin critic arrested before Russia's parliamentary vote")
Russia on Monday (July 13) arrested another Kremlin-critic Boris Nadezhdin, at a time when he was preparing to gather support to stand against Russian President Vladimir Putin in the upcoming presidential elections. Nadezhdin shot to fame in Russia in 2024, after he publicly criticisd Putin’s rule and Moscow’s Ukraine war. Initially, he was barred from campaigning and on Monday he wrote on Telegram: “The police came.” Later, he published a document that said he was being charged with “demonstration of extremist symbols” for a 2023 video, which featured a photo of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny. It is unclear if he will be in exile or in prison. The Russian authorities had called him a “foreign agent” just three days ago.
Who is Boris Nadezhdin?
Nadezhdin served a local municipal councilor in the Moscow region for approximately 30 years. He served as a member of Russia's parliament (the State Duma) from 1999 to 2003 with the liberal Union of Right Forces (SPS) party. The party dissolved in 2008 after repeated electoral failures. In the late 1990s, he worked directly as an adviser to assassinated opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and as an assistant to Sergei Kiriyenko. An insider, he frequently appeared on Russian state television talk shows. The Kremlin used him as a controlled "expert" to voice mild liberal criticisms, according to reports.
A complete turnabout of sorts came in 2023 when Nadezhdin unexpectedly launched a presidential campaign to run against Putin and centered his manifesto on anti-war. He described Putin's "special military operation" in Ukraine was a "fatal mistake." He also gathered unprecedented support for his campaign as thousands of ordinary Russians across the country stood in massive queues to sign his petitions. He easily gathered more than double the required signatures and was ready to fight the election against Putin. Just a month later, Russia’s Central Election Commission officially barred him from running, claiming that over 15 per cent of the voter signatures he submitted had minor bureaucratic "irregularities." In July 2026, he was labelled a “foreign agent.”
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"I am the only opposition independent candidate in Russia that is gathering signatures to run,” he said in a video on YouTube, adding: “The consequences of the war are obvious to everyone.” ”The course that Putin is taking the country all these years, 25 years of his power, is the path of militarisation, isolationism and authoritarianism. It is a path that leads to chaos and — God forbid, to the example of 1917,” he said, referring to the Russian revolution. The Parliamentary election in Russia is set for September 20 this year.
