Anti-war Russian presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin will not submit signatures collected abroad when applying for candidacy

Russian politician and aspiring presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin will not submit signatures collected abroad to Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) when applying to officially join the race, he told the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

Nadezhdin’s campaign bid has gained steam in recent weeks as the Kremlin appears to have let it proceed in spite of the politician’s openly anti-war statements. To formally register as a candidate, Nadezhdin is required to gather 100,000 signatures from voters, with no more than 2,500 coming from any single region. As of January 26, according to its website, the campaign had collected more than 197,000 signatures.

“We welcome signatures from abroad, but we won’t give them to the CEC, since we have enough signatures from inside the country,” Nadezhdin told journalists.

Ivan Petrov, the politician’s press secretary, told the independent outlet Agentstvo that the campaign views the signatures gathered abroad as “backups.” He thanked Russians around the world for supporting Nadezhdin: “[Your support] gave us confidence that things will work out in any scenario.”

On January 24, multiple Russian Telegram channels noted that Russian law prohibits candidates from using signatures collected abroad from Russian citizens who do not live permanently abroad, and that a violation of this rule could give the CEC grounds to reject Nadezhdin’s application. A representative of the Nadezhdin campaign told Agentstvo that this is not the reason for their decision not to submit signatures collected outside of Russia.