He was banned from running for president. He stills thinks only elections can change Russia

Despite being disqualified from running for president, Russian opposition politici‐ an Boris Nadezhdin still thinks elections are the on‐ ly way there can ever be a change of government in Russia.

"Elections in Russia now are not fair and not free," he told CBC News in a Zoom in‐ terview from Dolgoprudny, a town on the northern out‐ skirts of Moscow.

"But I do not know anoth‐ er way to change the politics and the power in Russia."

Nadezhdin, who cam‐ paigned against the war and urged Russia to enter into peace talks, has repeatedly called Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine "a fatal mistake."

He is convinced Putin's "politics have no future" in Russia - even as the man who has ruled the country for about a quarter of a century is slated to be re-elected in just over 10 days.

He was disqualified from the race last month, after the country's election commis‐ sion claimed it found "irregu‐ larities," including the names of deceased people, among the more than 105,000 signa‐ tures he'd submitted in sup‐ port of his campaign.

WATCH | Opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin on Russia's future:

Nadezhdin has been par‐ ticipating in Russian elections for three decades, including serving in the State Duma, Russia's lower house of par‐ liament, between 1999 and 2003. His political career in‐ cludes close connections to opposition figures and Krem‐ lin insiders.

While he has openly criti‐ cized the government on state-controlled media, he has thus far managed to es‐ cape the fate of many of Rus‐ sia's other dissidents who have been killed, jailed or have fled the country for their own safety.

Same goal; different ap‐ proach

Nadezhdin says he has the same vision for Russia as Alexei Navalny, the opposi‐ tion leader who died last month while imprisoned in an Arctic penal colony; his supporters and some West‐ ern officials are accusing the Kremlin of directing his death.

Like Navalny, Nadezhdin says he hopes for a free Rus‐ sia, where people are free to speak their mind without fear, and the absolute power of the Kremlin is curtailed.

However, they differ in ap‐ proach, he says.

He says he would not urge people to take to the streets in protest, because it's too dangerous, given the state's often harsh and swift retribution.

Despite the Kremlin's con‐ trol of the country's political system, Nadezhdin insisted that elections are the sole option, and dismissed any suggestion that Russia could only change through an up‐ rising.

"Big revolution in Russia would be a very big problem … for all the world," he said.

"The collapse of a big country with nuclear weapons is a nightmare."

In Russia's upcoming presidential election, which runs March 15 to 17, Putin will be running against three candidates who all support what the Kremlin calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine.

Controversy in previous elections

Putin, 71, is poised to easily win. In 2020, voters approved a change to the constitution, allowing him to run for presi‐ dent in 2024, and potentially again in 2030. With power centralized around the Krem‐ lin and no meaningful oppo‐ sition, Putin will likely win a fifth term in an electoral sys‐ tem that many international observers say is plagued by corruption and vote manipu‐ lation.

At the time, Nadezhdin signed a letter urging Russian citizens to reject the changes. However, they were passed in a controversial referen‐ dum that independent elec‐ tion observers said was prob‐ lematic, with concerns that voter turnout in some re‐ gions was artificially boosted.

Results from electronic voting have also been previ‐ ously contested. The 2021 parliamentary election saw opposition groups and ob‐ servers claiming some of those results were manipu‐ lated. This upcoming presi‐ dential election will make the option available in 29 re‐ gions, including Crimea, which Russia illegally annex‐ ed in 2014.

More than 112 million people are eligible to vote in Russia, according to Russian officials. That also includes occupied Ukrainian territory. Nearly two million Russian citizens living abroad are also eligible to vote.

Campaign signatures

Nadezhdin, 60, has launched a number of unsuccessful court appeals to overturn the decision to disqualify him.

Nadezhdin said he col‐ lected over 200,000 signa‐ tures and submitted about half of them to the electoral commission on Jan. 31. (His party, the centre-right Civic Initiative, isn't represented in the Russian parliament. Thus, he was required to col‐ lect 100,000 voter signatures

supporting his candidacy.)

SOTA Vision, an indepen‐ dent Russian news channel that operates mainly on Telegram, reported a heavy police presence outside when Nadezhdin went to submit the signatures. He was barred from running just over a week later.

Nadezhdin told CBC News that scrutinizing signatures is a typical way for Russia's election commission to stop opposition candidates.

"It is very difficult to col‐ lect 200,000 signatures, and very easy to find some prob‐ lems with letters and num‐ bers," he said.

He has publicly vowed he will never give up, but also admits he has no chance of being on the ballot for this election. He said he is using this time to raise his profile and plot for the next one. He believes it will take place much sooner than 2030, be‐ cause he thinks pressure will build on Putin to step aside.

"More and more people understand the connection between Putin's politics and the problems with everyday life," he said.

He pointed to rising prices and drug shortages as some of the effects of the Western sanctions levelled against Russia over the past two years since its invasion of Ukraine began.

Nadezhdin says he is con‐ fident that Putin's successor, should he appoint one, will return Russia to "a normal di‐ rection" because he believes lawmakers are tiring of the country's international isola‐ tion.

"They want to be in Eu‐ rope again. They don't want to be in China or in North Ko‐ rea."

A call for his arrest

Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Jan. 24 during a routine call with the press that the Kremlin didn't con‐ sider Nadezhdin a rival.

But less than a week later, Nadezhdin, who has ap‐ peared on Russian talk shows before, drew the ire of one of the country's biggest television hosts.

Vladimir Solovyov, who anchors the talk show Evening with Vladimir Solovy‐ ov, accused him of being a political prop. Without offer‐ ing any evidence, Solovyov claimed on his Jan. 30 show that Nadezhdin was being fi‐ nancially supported by exiled opposition figures, and even members of Ukrainian intelli‐ gence.

He suggested he be ar‐ rested on charges for betray‐ ing the motherland.

When asked by CBC News why he thinks he hasn't yet been arrested for speaking out publicly, Nadezhdin said he wasn't quite sure, but that it may be because he hasn't criticized Putin personally just his politics.

He called the Russian president "very strong leader," but also someone whose head is stuck in the 19th century and is more concerned about having a strong military than being a country where "educated and free people" want to live.

Russia has a history of jail‐ ing political dissidents. Over the fall, a Russian artist was sentenced to seven years in prison for replacing super‐ market price tags with stick‐ ers protesting the war.

Nadezhdin says if he is ever elected, his first decree will be to free political prison‐ ers.

"We should change the politics of Russia.

"The track of militarism, the track of isolation, the track of authoritarianism is very bad ... for Russia."