Boris Nadezhdin, a Russian politician representing the so-called legal opposition, announced his candidacy for September's State Duma elections on 17 June and began collecting signatures in the Moscow region.
The Russian Ministry of Justice had other plans. On 10 July, it added Nadezhdin to its list of foreign agents, a designation that, under a law passed in May 2024, disqualifies him from running for office. Nadezhdin responded on social media, vowing to remain in Russia and continue his activities within the bounds of the law despite the obstacles now placed in his path.
The obstacles multiplied three days later, when police detained him. The official reason given was the dissemination of extremist symbols, stemming from a link Nadezhdin had posted on his Telegram channel on 18 June to a live YouTube broadcast featuring a photograph of the late opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who died in a Russian penal colony. He was released, but not before leaving open the possibility that he might yet leave the country.
History Repeats Itself
Ahead of the presidential election in January 2024, the Central Election Commission barred both Yekaterina Duntsova and Boris Nadezhdin from running, despite the fact that both had met the requirements. As a result, only Vladimir Putin and representatives of the systemic opposition appeared on the ballot.
This, among other factors, points to the illegitimacy of that presidential vote, leading many observers to expect similar tactics against the legal opposition this time around. September's State Duma elections will be the first since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Nadezhdin said on 14 July on his Telegram channel that after the presidential election, when asked how he was doing, he had replied that he was alive, free, in Russia, and not even designated as a foreign agent. He added that when he began running for the State Duma and collecting signatures, however, he once again caused significant concern among the country's leadership.
The Party Fares No Better
Barred from leaving Russia, Nadezhdin is now awaiting trial. His party, Yabloko, for which he is the only representative of the legal extra-parliamentary opposition, still does not know whether the Central Election Commission will permit it to run.
The regime's legal and quasi-legal campaign against the opposition is rarely transparent. To shed light on it, anonymous journalists from Russia's regions, working with the émigré portal Novaya Gazeta Europe, published a detailed report on 13 July examining Yabloko's current situation.
In recent months, the ministry of justice branded two of the party's deputy chairmen, Lev Shlosberg and Boris Vyshnevsky, foreign agents. Shlosberg remains in custody, charged with spreading “fake news about the army”. Another deputy, Maxim Kruglov, was sentenced to seven years in prison for the same offense at the end of June.
More than 40 other party members were barred from the race on separate grounds. Under its leader, Yaroslav Shcherbakov of Chelyabinsk, Yabloko has addressed every deficiency cited by the Central Election Commission, yet a rejected candidacy would leave the party no legal right to appeal. Its executive committee has nonetheless said it will pursue the matter in court if its registration is denied.
A Different Kind of Concern
Although the suppression of Russia's non-systemic opposition is felt most acutely inside the country, Ukrainians and foreign observers are watching the parliamentary elections for a different reason. Many expect them to be followed by a mobilization, a move Putin could make swiftly given his army's shortage of new contract soldiers.
Lieutenant Colonel Maxym Zhorin, Deputy Commander of the 3rd Army Corps, said it was evident that the Russian population was being prepared for a mobilization that would take place in one form or another in the near future. In that context, he said, a figure of 50,000 Russians killed per month was bound to become a reality.
Alexander Arutyunov takes the opposite view. A member of the invading army in Ukraine, longtime military blogger and administrator of the Telegram channel RAG&E, short for Razvedos Advanced Gear & Equipment, he declared back in April that talk of mobilization was nonsense.
Russia, Arutyunov argued, is already fighting “with everything it has”. He waved away discussions of mobilizing millions more as pointless, pointing out that equipment shortages would leave the General Staff no choice but to march mobilized troops toward Kyiv “on foot in small groups”.
Silence Now, Mobilization Later
Speaking to the Telegraph in early July, Czech President Petr Pavel said Putin could declare a general mobilization once the September elections were over, and called for stepped-up efforts to reach a peace agreement.
In late June, eight sources inside the security services, the presidential administration and military draft offices told the Russian émigré websites Verstka and Vazhnye Istorii that a mobilization might be announced in October, after the vote.
The same threat, according to several sources, is already being deployed against released prisoners recruited into the army, as well as against university students whom authorities are trying to entice into signing agreements with the ministry of defense.
On 16 July, Andriy Chernyak of Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR) said the Kremlin would say nothing about mobilization until after the elections. Russia, he added, has sufficient training centers already and has no need to build more for a general mobilization.
What Russia lacks, in his view, is simply fresh “cannon fodder”, and a post-election mobilization “cannot be ruled out”. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky holds the same view, while the Kremlin continues to deny that any mobilization is planned.