How doomed presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin rallied antiwar Russians

Boris Nadezhdin’s surname has its root in the Russian word for “hope,” and he’s inspired just that in tens of thousands of voters as the politician with an antiwar message who’s come the furthest in the country’s byzantine bureaucracy for presidential candidacy. Nadezhdin’s campaign says it’s collected roughly 200,000 signatures, which is twice what it technically needs for the Central Election Commission to add his name to the ballot in March. While the commission’s approval remains unlikely, the Nadezhdin campaign has been a major news event for antiwar Russians, especially in the ever-growing diaspora, where thousands of people have lined up in cities across Europe and the Caucasus to offer their signatures.

Nadezhdhin’s allies have no illusions about his prospects, but showing their support for an antiwar challenger to Vladimir Putin has quickly become the opposition’s first visible civic movement in some time. To understand how this happened, who Nadezhdin is as a politician, and how opposition politics has worked throughout Russia’s Putin era, The Naked Pravda welcomes back Dr. Маrgarita Zavadskaya, a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

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Timestamps for this episode:

• (5:43) Nadezhdin’s Political Career and Ideology
• (9:58) Understanding the Nature of Russian Liberal Politicians
• (19:26) The Role of Elections in Authoritarian Regimes
• (26:04) A Hopeful Note: The Power of Collective Action

New episodes of The Naked Pravda are released at the end of every week. Catch each show by subscribing through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or one of these other platforms. If you have a question or comment about the podcast, please write to Kevin Rothrock at kevin@meduza.io with the subject line: “The Naked Pravda.”

Production and mixing by Ania Kovalenko. Sound editing by Kevin Rothrock.