Anti-war challenger Duntsova blocked from running against Russia's Putin
LONDON, (Reuters) - Former TV journalist Yekaterina Duntsova was disqualified yesterday as a candidate for Russia's next presidential election, preventing her from running against Vladimir Putin on a platform of opposition to the war in Ukraine.
Members of the central electoral commission voted unanimously to reject her candidacy, citing "numerous violations" in the papers she had submitted in support of her bid.
Putin's critics said the decision showed that no one with genuine opposition views would be allowed to stand against him next March in the first presidential election since the start of the 22-month war. They see it as a fake process with only one possible outcome.
The Kremlin says Putin will win because he enjoys genuine support across society, with opinion poll ratings of around 80%.
Duntsova, 40, said on Telegram she would challenge the decision in the Supreme Court, calling it unjustified and undemocratic.
"With this political decision, we are deprived of the opportunity to have our own representative and express views that differ from the official aggressive discourse," she said. In a separate development, Russian news outlets said Boris Nadezhdin, an opposition politician who has been critical of Putin and the war, was put forward as a candidate on Saturday by the centre-right Civic Initiative party. They said he planned to register with the electoral commission on Dec. 25.
The head of the electoral commission, Ella Pamfilova, offered words of consolation to Duntsova after her rejection.
"You are a young woman, you have everything ahead of you. Any minus can always be turned into a plus. Any experience is still an experience," Pamfilova said.
Screenshots posted by a telegram channel representing Duntsova showed documents with signatures that it said the commission had highlighted as inadmissible.
Duntsova appealed to veteran liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky to let her run as a representative of his Yabloko party rather than as an independent candidate, which would allow her to submit a new application.
But Yavlinsky said in an interview on a YouTube channel that Yabloko was not planning to field a candidate and would not back Duntsova "because we don't know her".
When Duntsova said last month that she wanted to stand, commentators had variously described her as crazy, brave, or part of a Kremlinscripted plan to create the appearance of competition.
"Any sane person taking this step would be afraid - but fear must not win," she told Reuters in an interview in November in which she called for the release of political prisoners and said Russians were "very tired" of the conflict in Ukraine.
Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter now labelled by the authorities as a "foreign agent", said Putin had not wanted to risk the same scenario as Alexander Lukashenko.