Putin launches election campaign with arrest of last opposition figure

Russian President Vladimir Putin kicked off the legislative election campaign in September by arresting opposition figure Boris Nadezhdin, who had vied for the Kremlin in 2024. Nadezhdin, 63, was taken to a police station just hours before Putin's first campaign event, an effort to boost the flagging poll numbers of the Kremlin's United Russia party.

A former associate of the assassinated Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, Nadezhdin was one of the few Russian politicians to attend the funeral of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny two years ago. The politician announced his detention on Telegram, stating police had taken him to a station in the Moscow region.

Hours later, Nadezhdin posted that he was accused of extremism for publishing a link with an image of Navalny in 2023. He denied the charges, asserting he never published and would not publish any image with extremist symbolism. Nadezhdin had been declared a foreign agent by the Ministry of Justice on Friday. Media reports suggest that since a May 2024 amendment, the foreign agent status prevents individuals from running in elections.

Police sources informed TASS that Nadezhdin could face a 15-day arrest for extremism, which would definitively disqualify him from running for a seat in the Duma. Some experts believe Nadezhdin's defiant stance, accusing the Kremlin of trying to "exclude the most dangerous rivals" to guarantee a "desired result," sealed his fate. Nadezhdin, who once had a 15% voter intention before the March 2024 presidential elections, also compared the foreign agent designation to the Soviet-era "enemy of the people" label. He had previously attempted to run in the 2024 presidential election, advocating for peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, but the Central Election Commission rejected his application due to signature collection flaws.

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Vino la policía. Me llevan a la comisaría de Dolgoprudni