Boris Nadezhdin has been found guilty of “displaying extremist symbols.” The court fined the politician 1,000 rubles (US$11). The reason was a portrait of Alexei Navalny. In 2023, Nadezhdin announced on Telegram a livestream by politician Elvira Vikhareva featuring himself—the footage showed a photo of Navalny for about 10 seconds.

“The real aim of what’s happening here is to silence me and prevent me from standing for the State Duma,” he said. Once the court’s decision comes into force, the politician will not be able to take part in the upcoming elections.

We recall Boris Nadezhdin’s history of persecution, talk about his political views, and his attempts to fight for power.

Two years later, during the process of collecting signatures to run for the State Duma, Nadezhdin was labelled a “foreign agent.” Three days later he was detained. Afterwards, the politician said he was thinking of leaving the country—though he also called it “a headache of such scale you can’t imagine.”

“If I were a young single guy, I’d go inside [to jail] without hesitation and keep standing my ground. But when you’re not so young, not so healthy, and you have children to raise, you can’t help but think about it,” the politician explained in a broadcast of The Breakfast Show.

A few days after this interview, Nadezhdin received notice via Gosuslugithat he was banned from leaving the country.

Nadezhdin is a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). At the end of the 1990s, he set up and headed the law department there. By that time, he had already become interested in politics. Here are a few facts from his biography:

• In 1990, he became a deputy of the Council of People’s Deputies in his hometown, Dolgoprudny (a city near Moscow);
• In 1997–1998, he was an advisor to Boris Nemtsov (then Deputy Prime Minister of Russia) and an assistant to Sergey Kiriyenko (at that time Prime Minister);
• In 1999, he became a State Duma deputy from the Union of Right Forces party bloc and was also deputy chair of the faction, which was headed by Boris Nemtsov;
• In 2011, he headed the Moscow regional branch of “Right Cause,” then led by Prokhorov. There, he faced accusations of nationalism;
• In 2016, during the State Duma elections, he led the Moscow regional list for theGrowth Party, without actually joining the party itself. He didn’t get elected to the State Duma;
• In 2023, he ran from the Civic Initiative party for governor of Moscow Oblast (the region surrounding Moscow). Ultimately, he was barred from running. The same party later put Nadezhdin forward as their presidential candidate.

“I am a Russian patriot. Now, when people ask me ‘Boris Borisovich, are you a liberal? ,’ I say: ‘No. I am a Russian patriot.’ And that’s the honest truth! I truly want Russia to be great, but not in the way Putin thinks—tossing ‘Kinzhal’ and ‘Iskander’ missiles around. I mean great in the sense that [it should be] a free, peaceful country, where everyone wants to come and people feel happy here,” said Nadezhdin about his views in an interview with Meduza.

For his most recent election campaign, Nadezhdin was collecting signatures under the slogan “Peace. Development. Fair Elections. Strong Cities.” Here are the main points of his platform (original spelling and punctuation preserved):

• End the “Special Military Operation,” live in peace
• Restore mobile internet, access to social networks and messengers
• Peaceful budget spending and reasonable taxes
• The state’s priority—Russia’s internal problems
• An independent state and genuine sovereignty
• Return powers and funds to regions and cities
• Reinstate direct mayoral elections and genuine gubernatorial elections
• End repression, amnesty for political prisoners
• Return normal life and good people to Russia

What next?

Boris Nadezhdin linked the persecution to the fact that being declared a “foreign agent” did not make him drop out of the State Duma elections.

“They declared me a ‘foreign agent’ and thought I would immediately leave or announce: stop, no one goes to collect signatures. But instead, I began collecting signatures even more actively,” said Nadezhdin in an interview with the Agentstvo news outlet. “That’s why they moved to ‘plan B’—to hit me with an article that will instantly give the election authorities grounds to cancel my nomination,” he concluded.

Having “foreign agent” status prohibits you from running in elections in Russia. A similar one-year ban is imposed by the article on “displaying extremist symbols,” under which the politician was fined 1,000 rubles (US$11) on 17 July.

Despite all this, the politician remains upbeat. According to him, right now “the wind is blowing in the opposition’s sails.” And even if he is not allowed to run, younger people with similar views will be able to take part in politics. “Not everyone’s a foreign agent or extremist. They can’t declare everyone a foreign agent,” Nadezhdin says.