More than 15,000 Russians on Sunday endorsed the candidacy of Alexei Navalny, seen as the only opposition leader who stands a fighting chance of challenging Russian President Vladimir Putin in a March vote.
“An election without us is not an election,” Navalny said in Moscow at about 5pm GMT before submitting his nomination to the Central Electoral Commission, which will rule whether he can run.
Authorities have deemed the 41-year-old ineligible to run due to a criminal conviction, saying “only a miracle” would help him get registered.
Photo: Reuters
Navalny has described the conviction as politically motivated.
Thousands backing the charismatic lawyer met in 20 cities from the Pacific port of Vladivostok to Saint Petersburg in the northwest to nominate him as a candidate in the presence of electoral officials to boost his chances of contesting the March 18 ballot.
His campaign said more than 15,000 people endorsed him nationwide. An independent candidate needs 500 votes to get registered with election authorities, according to legislation.
In Moscow, more than 700 people supported Navalny’s candidacy as they gathered in a huge marquee set up in a picturesque park on the snow-covered banks of the Moscow River.
“I am hugely happy; I am proud to tell you that I stand here as a candidate of the entire Russia,” Navalny told supporters earlier.
“We are ready to win and we will win these elections,” Navalny said before finishing his speech in a cloud of confetti.
Navalny said that if he is not allowed to put his name on the ballot, he will contest the ban in courts and repeated his threat to call for the polls to be boycotted if he did not get registered.
“Thwart the elections if they are dishonest,” he told supporters.
Putin, 65, announced this month that he will seek a fourth presidential term, which would extend his rule until 2024 and make him the longest-serving Russian leader since dictator Joseph Stalin.
Opposed by token opposition candidates, he is widely expected to sail to victory.
However, with the result of the March vote a foregone conclusion, turnout could be low, harming Putin’s hopes for a clear new mandate, observers say.
Navalny, who has tapped into the anger of a younger generation who yearn for change, hopes that popular support for his Kremlin bid would pressure authorities into putting his name on the ballot.
“If Navalny is not allowed to run, I am not going to vote,” pensioner Marina Kurbatskaya said in Moscow. “I don’t see anyone else who I want to become president.”
Navalny has built a robust protest movement in the face of persistent harassment and jumped through multiple hoops as he campaigned across the nation in an effort to shift attitudes amid widespread political ennui.
He says he is the only Russian politician who has run a genuine Western-style political campaign, stumping for votes in far-flung regions.
Many critics scoff at Navalny’s Kremlin bid, but the anticorruption blogger says he would beat Putin in a free election if he had access to state-controlled TV, the main source of news for a majority of Russians.
Navalny shot to prominence as an organizer of huge anti-Putin rallies that shook Russia in 2011 and 2012 following claims of vote-rigging in parliamentary polls.
The rallies gradually died down, but he has been able to breathe new life into the protest movement this year, bringing out tens of thousands of mostly young protesters onto the streets.
“We need a new president,” Alexander Semyonov, 18, said in Saint Petersburg, where more than 1,800 supporters backed Navalny’s bid.
Separately, Ilya Yashin, a pro-opposition municipal deputy, gathered several hundred people for an unauthorized protest in central Moscow in support of free elections and Navalny’s bid.
“Putin is a thief,” some chanted as police looked on.
Despite a litany of problems such as corruption, poor healthcare and increasing poverty, opinion polls suggest Putin enjoys approval ratings of 80 percent.
Asked why Navalny had been barred from running, Putin — who has refused to mention him by name in public — said the opposition was hoping for a “coup,” but would not succeed.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
RSS