Election staff find flaws in paperwork of Putin’s anti-war challenger

Irregularities have been found in paperwork submitted by Russian anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin in support of his bid to run against President Vladimir Putin, an election official said on Friday.

Nadezhdin this week presented the electoral commission with signatures from more than 100,000 supporters across Russia as part of his bid to get his name on the ballot paper for the March 15-17 election.

But Nikolai Bulayev, deputy chairman of the commission, said some of the purported signatures were those of dead people.

His comments appeared to increase the likelihood that officials will cite technical grounds for disqualifying Nadezhdin, who has surprised observers with his trenchant criticism of Putin and the war in Ukraine. The commission will announce next week which candidates have been cleared to run.

Nobody expects Nadezhdin, 60, to win even if he is allowed to participate, given Putin’s long dominance and control of the state. But his campaign has captured people’s attention because of his outright opposition to what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Launching it was a “fatal mistake” by Putin, Nadezhdin has said. He has promised to end the conflict by negotiation.

At a televised meeting of the commission, Bulayev said its staff had virtually finished checking the signatures of another candidate, Sergei Malinkovich, and were working “practically round the clock” on Nadezhdin’s.

Bulayev said some mistakes in the lists were to be expected.

“But when we see dozens… of people who are no longer on this earth, and they gave signatures, the question arises about the decency of the ethical standards being applied, including by the person who collected the signature. And the candidate to some extent is directly involved in this.”

‘DEAD SOULS’

Nadezhdin himself made light of the issue in a message to his supporters on Telegram.

“You and I are the most alive of the living. If someone imagines they see dead souls in my signature lists – well friends, that is not a question for me. It’s more for the church, or an exorcist,” he said.

The concept of “dead souls” was made famous in Russia by Nikolai Gogol’s classic 19th century novel “Dead Souls”, in which a con man buys up landowners’ dead peasants as part of a financial scam.

Some analysts believe Nadezhdin’s growing profile is becoming an annoyance for Putin, 71, and that the Kremlin may seek a pretext to stop him. In the past, electoral authorities have disqualified candidates whose signatures from supporters were ruled as invalid.

The Kremlin has said it does not see Nadezhdin as a serious rival to Putin, who it says will win the election on the basis of overwhelming popular support built up during more than two decades in power as either president or prime minister.