A black Russian, CEO of the Internet company Morpheus Network and blogger Samson Sholademi, announced his candidacy for the post of mayor of Moscow on Tuesday, June 25, Interfax reports .

“36-year-old Samson Bartolomiovich Sholademi became the 28th candidate for the position of mayor of Moscow,” the Moscow City Election Commission told the agency. They noted that today the number of nominees is almost twice as high as in the mayoral elections in 2003.

“In short, I also decided to run for mayor of Moscow,” Sholademi himself wrote on his LiveJournal blog on Tuesday. According to him, he intends “as a simple Russian blogger and an ordinary citizen of the Russian Federation” to “try his hand at big politics and see from the inside how this system works.” Sholademi also said that on Monday he went to the Moscow City Election Commission to clarify what documents he needed to bring, and the guard was very surprised to see such a candidate. “In general, I am satisfied with the friendly attitude of the employees of the Moscow City Election Commission. So far there are no complaints about their work,” the self-nominated candidate stated.

Like other candidates, Samson Sholademi needs to obtain 110 signatures from members of municipal assemblies and collect more than 73,000 signatures from voters. More than 5,600 people have subscribed to Sholademi's LiveJournal. His blog ranks 711 in the overall user rating.

Early elections for the mayor of Moscow will take place on September 8, 2013. Among those who submitted documents are 50-year-old electrician , acting Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin , oppositionist Alexei Navalny , State Duma deputy from the LDPR Mikhail Degtyarev, Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin, musician Sergei “Spider” Troitsky , State Duma deputy speaker from A Just Russia Nikolai Levicheva and others.

A black Muscovite runs for mayor