It's Official: Boris Nadezhdin Denied Chance to Run Against Putin

'Thousands' of signatures were allegedly falsified, according to Russian Central Election commission

Courtesy of Fontanka.ru

Above are the faces of the bureaucrats assigned to crush the hopes of millions of Russians across the globe. Hoping for an opportunity to legally express their dislike of Vladimir Putin, thousands of Russian citizens waited hours in sub-zero weather to sign their names, requesting that Nadezhdin be permitted to run in the upcoming election.

Look again at these faces of inspired, life-positive bureaucrats. These are the kinds of people who regularly tell their children, “Stop dreaming! Go to your room and check the boxes with the pen you got for your birthday.” These people and their work as overseers of Russia’s elections were the last line of defense between a genuine opportunity for millions of average Russians to declare in one voice: We do not support this tyrant and his war of genocide against Ukraine. Alas, fearing that unified voice and what it could mean, the forces ever plotting a violent end for Putin, the Kremlin decided to end all of the silliness before it went any further.

It’s not like we didn’t expect that, after all. 

What next 

Nothing. The power of this group of Russians opposing Putin lies in the simple but irrefutable fact that these people represent every walk of life in Russia. They weren’t LBTGQ+ protestors and so couldn’t be labeled “perverted, Western agents.” They weren’t students led astray by the internet and Western values. They weren’t even anti-protestors who hit the streets in March 2022. They were retirees, teachers, moms and dads, shop clerks, and tram drivers. The people who stood in the lines throughout January were Richard Nixon’s “silent majority,” and they were legally telling the world that they had had enough of Putin and his crimes. 

I would like to imagine that this scared the hell out of Putin, but it didn’t. He has a praetorian guard consisting of 400,000 dumbasses armed with guns, rubber batons, jackboots, and shields. They are a lawless force whose sole purpose is to protect Vladimir Putin from the truth. The Nadezhdin supporters are not the kinds of people who will take to the streets and challenge these dummies in black. They are the people who will silently express disappointment and then wake up the next day and go back to work — waiting for the moment when Russia might one day finally rid itself of this nightmare.

Had Putin, in one of his less lucid moments, decided to allow Nadezhdin to run, then the ultimate support that the opposition could have won in the election might have topped 20 percent. 20 percent opposed to Putin is the kind of number that could’ve kicked off an unseen chain of events that ended with Putin’s car blowing up or a missile landing on his house while he slept inside. A bloody, prolonged civil war is not something the forces that keep Putin in power want for Russia. 

Thanks to the massive realignment of government finances, which are being pumped relentlessly into the war effort, many people are still making fortunes at the expense of Russia’s future. The war is still very profitable for them. A large, silent majority of opposition to Putin, however, is precisely the kind of precursor for which the killers lurking in the shadows keep their eyes peeled. Civil war, and even the threat of one, are the disruptions these protectors of the sovereign wealth won’t like.

Boris Nadezhdin is the canary in Vladimir Putin’s mine. Nadezhdin is figuratively dead, but Putin has noticed and will act accordingly. Others, however, have also taken notice, and all we can do is hope they will act accordingly.