Boris Nadezhdin, an anti-war presidential hopeful who has galvanized Russian opposition to President Vladimir Putin, said on February 5 that the Central Election Commission (TsIK) told him a technicality could keep him off the ballot in an election next month, but he vowed to fight the allegation.
Nadezhdin met with TsIK officials on February 5, five days after submitting more than the 100,000 support signatures needed to apply to be a candidate for the March 15-17 election as thousands of Russians were shown lining up to join his campaign.
The 60-year-old academic and former lawmaker said TsIK officials said they found "flaws" in more than 15 percent of the support signatures in his application, with a final decision expected on his candidacy on February 7.
"It will be enough for us to prove the eligibility of 4,500 signatures of the 9,209 that were recognized as invalid," Nadezhdin wrote on Telegram.
"If the Central Election Commission refuses to register me, I will appeal the decision to the Supreme Court."
The Kremlin's tight grip on politics, media, law enforcement, and other levers nationwide means Putin, who has ruled Russia as president or prime minister since 1999, is certain to win, barring a very big, unexpected development.
But the surprising show of support for the little-known Nadezhdin, whose platform says the invasion of Ukraine was a "fatal mistake" and accuses Putin of dragging Russia into the past instead of building a sustainable future, is complicating the Kremlin's more aggressive ambition of boosting the perception of Putin's legitimacy.
Nadezhdin has been supported by associates of imprisoned opposition politician Aleksei Navalny and self-exiled opposition figures Maksim Kats and Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The TsIK routinely refuses to register would-be opposition candidates on the pretext that they submitted an insufficient number of valid signatures, the entire signature process forming a kind of filter against unwelcome developments.
Russia's presidential election law allows for flaws in up to 5 percent of signatures among 60,000 that are checked to approve a candidate's registration.
Nadezhdin's spokesman Pavel Burlakov said, "We do not agree with the commission's decision."
"The whole world has seen that we have compiled all the signatures fairly," Burlakov said.
Putin was officially registered as a candidate last week and approved almost immediately after the TsIK found a flaw rate of 0.15 percent in his supporting signatures.
Russian elections are tightly controlled by the Kremlin and are neither free nor fair but are viewed by the government as necessary to convey a sense of legitimacy. They are mangled by the exclusion of opposition candidates, voter intimidation, ballot stuffing, and other means of manipulation.
Those who were expected to be Putin's main challengers currently are either incarcerated or fled the country, fearing for their safety.
In mid-November, Putin signed into law a bill on amendments to the law on presidential elections that restricts coverage of the poll, while also giving the TsIK the right to change the election procedure in territories where martial law has been introduced.