Newsparviews: Yekaterina Duntsova, a former TV journalist, was disqualified from standing against Vladimir Putin in Russia’s next presidential election on Saturday. Her platform included opposition to the conflict in Ukraine.
The central electoral commission rejected her candidacy with a unanimous vote, alleging “numerous violations” in the materials she had filed to support her campaign.
Putin’s detractors claimed the ruling demonstrated that in the first presidential election held since the beginning of the 22-month conflict, no one with sincere oppositional beliefs would be permitted to run against him in March of next year.
According to the Kremlin, Putin will prevail because he has 80% or more of the public’s true support.
The 40-year-old Duntsova declared on Telegram that she will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court, citing it as undemocratic and unjust.
“With this political decision, we are deprived of the opportunity to have our own representative and express views that differ from the official aggressive discourse,” she stated.
Opposition candidate plans to run
Separately, Russian news agencies reported that the center-right Civic Initiative party announced Boris Nadezhdin as a candidate on Saturday. Nadezhdin is an opposition leader who has opposed both the war and Putin. They stated that he intended to register on Monday with the election commission.
Images of signatures on documents that a telegram channel advocating for Duntsova said the commission had marked as unacceptable were shared.
In an attempt to reapply, Duntsova pleaded with seasoned liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky to enable her to run as a representative of his Yabloko party instead than as an independent.
However, Yavlinsky stated in a YouTube channel interview that Yabloko would not support Duntsova “because we don’t know her” and was not preparing to field a candidate.
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