He anticipates a Kremlin-led campaign to discredit Nadezhdin.
Tatiana Kolobakina, a 24-year-old Moscow journalist and political activist, supported Nadezhdin to legally express her anti-war sentiments, despite expecting his rejection from the race.
“It was important to show that there are many of us who are against. The entire state aims to make us feel like a small minority. Well, these queues show that this is not the case,” she told POLITICO.
A Nadezhdin campaign volunteer, 25-year-old Alexei Popov from Yakutsk some 5,000 kilometers from Moscow, also anticipated the CEC’s refusal. “This doesn’t mean that it was all in vain.”
The upcoming “‘election’ is still an excellent way to draw people’s attention to political processes and problems in Russia,” he said.
A former Kremlin political consultant told POLITICO that an anti-war candidate on the ballot threatened Putin’s campaign. “Once registered, he would get access to the state TV,” said the consultant, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about recent employees. Such a level of access to the public was dangerous in and of itself, the consultant explained.