Nadezhdin, who opposed the Ukraine war and was barred from running, posted a video from Paris saying he is "alive and free."
10:22 AM
Russian opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin has left Russia and arrived in France, according to a video he posted on his Telegram channel on August 3. In the video, filmed in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Nadezhdin stated: "There is good news: I am alive and free. Unfortunately, not in Russia. Now I need to assess my situation and understand how to proceed. I will write about my plans later."
Nadezhdin, 63, is a longtime politician active since the 1990s who has been openly opposed to the war in Ukraine. He did not disclose how he left the country.
In mid-July, Nadezhdin received notification that he had been designated as an extremist by Russian authorities. Following this designation, he suspended his electoral campaign for the September legislative elections, in which he had planned to run as an independent candidate for Parliament.
Nadezhdin had previously attempted to run in Russia's 2024 presidential election. He was the only pacifist candidate in that race and gathered significant public support, with long lines of people signing petitions at his campaign offices across multiple Russian regions. However, the Central Electoral Commission disqualified him, citing an unacceptably high percentage of invalid signatures.
The extremism designation that led to his current suspension from the September elections was based on an image of deceased opposition leader Alexei Navalny that appeared in a link posted on Nadezhdin's social media accounts. Nadezhdin denied culpability for the image's presence. Similar designations have been applied to other liberal candidates in Russia.
Nadezhdin stated in his video that he would communicate his future plans at a later time.
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