Russian anti-war presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin says he has been banned from running against Vladimir Putin in the carefully managed presidential elections in March.
Earlier on Thursday the central election commission (CEC) said it had found “irregularities” in over 9,000 of more than 100,000 signatures of support submitted by Nadezhdin.
That figure was three times higher than the allowable 5% error rate and provides grounds for the commission to disqualify Nadezhdin.
CEC’s deputy chair Nikolai Bulaev said last week it had found 11 “dead souls” among the more than 100,000 signatures of support submitted by Nadezhdin.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Wednesday’s decision was widely expected and comes after a working group of the CEC on Monday claimed it had found 15% of the supporters’ signatures he submitted to be invalid.
Nadezhdin, a veteran politician who has associated with Kremlin insiders and the opposition to Putin, has been waging a last-minute campaign to get on the ballot for the election, with thousands of Russians standing for hours in the freezing cold to add their signature in his support.
Nadezhdin said in his election manifesto that Putin had made a “fatal mistake by starting the special military operation” in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s preferred term for its invasion.
Russian state media ramped up its smear campaign against Nadezhdin in recent weeks, which underlined the Kremlin’s concern about the unexpected show of support for a politician who was previously unknown among the general population.
Another openly anti-war candidate, Yekaterina Duntsova, has already been disqualified by the elections commission, which refused to accept her nomination because of alleged errors in her paperwork, including spelling mistakes.
If he remains in power until then, his tenure will surpass even that of Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union for 29 years, making Putin the longest-serving Moscow leader since the Russian empire.
The original article contains 579 words, the summary contains 204 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!