LONDON, Aug 3 (Reuters) – Russian anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin said on Monday that he had left the country for the time being, weeks after Moscow designated him a “foreign agent” and disqualified him from running in a parliamentary election.
“Hi everyone! I have some good news. I’m alive and free. Unfortunately, I’m not in Russia at the moment,” Nadezhdin, standing in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, said in a short video posted on Telegram.
“Right now, I need to get my bearings and figure out what to do next. I’ll write about my plans later.”
Nadezhdin, 63, a former liberal lawmaker, has been an outspoken critic of Moscow’s war in Ukraine but — like some other opposition politicians — had tried to work within the rules of Russia’s tightly controlled political system to be able to continue to voice his views publicly.
His departure marks the loss of yet another prominent opposition voice willing to challenge the Kremlin from inside Russia, with most critics of President Vladimir Putin now either in jail or in exile.
His hopes of running for parliament in September were squashed when the Justice Ministry added him on July 10 to its “foreign agents” list — a label widely applied by the authorities to people they deem to be engaged in anti-Russian activity with alleged backing from abroad.
The following week, he was questioned by police and received a small fine in court for displaying “extremist symbols” on social media, a charge he described as ridiculous. He complained then that the authorities were “silencing me, forcing me out of politics and making my life extremely difficult”.
Russia has clamped down hard on dissent since going to war in Ukraine in 2022.
Pro-Kremlin politicians accuse the West of trying to destabilise Russia and say that some censorship is necessary to safeguard national unity at a time when Moscow is locked in an existential struggle with Ukraine and the West.
Nadezhdin attempted to mount a long-shot run against Putin for the presidency in 2024 but was disqualified on technical grounds by the Election Commission.
(Reporting by Reuters, writing by Mark TrevelyanEditing by Tomasz Janowski)
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