Putin’s opponent disqualified from running for president of Russia

Russia’s election committee said no to Boris Nadezhdin, who wanted to run for president and is against the war.

Mr Nadezhdin has spoken out against Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, but in Russia, not many people are allowed to disagree.

He tried to prove that the election commission was wrong about more than 15% of the signatures on his application being wrong.

However, the commission said no to his offer.

Mr Nadezhdin said on social media that he won’t give up and will take the decision to Russia’s Supreme Court.

I got over 200,000 people’s names in Russia. We gathered things in a fair and honest way.

The Election Commission said that Mr Nadezhdin‘s 9,000 signatures were not valid.

He was very close to getting the 100,000 signatures he needed, but he ended up with 95,587 names, said commission member Andrei Shutov.

Russia will choose a president between 15-17 March. It’s already known that only candidates approved by the Kremlin are running, so the result is not a surprise.

A decision on who can participate in the election will be made on Saturday.