- In less than six weeks, Russia will hold its presidential election in mid-March.
- Russian anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin delivered 105,000 signatures to the CEC.
- The CEC will verify the legitimacy and caliber of the signatures.
In less than six weeks, Russia will hold its presidential election in mid-March. Boris Nadezhdin, the anti-war candidate, has already sent 105,000 signatures to the Central Election Commission.
There are worries that Nadezhdin, a well-known politician in Russia who has opposed the war loudly, may be attempted to be disqualified from participating in the election by the commission. A senior member of Russia’s Security Council asserted that before the election, the West might attempt to “shake up” domestic politics in Russia.
Presidential election
After a planned exchange was canceled due to the downing of a Russian jet carrying 65 POWs, Ukraine and Russia exchanged prisoners of war (POWs). President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared that 207 Ukrainian prisoners had been returned, and Russian military officers had validated the exchange by declaring that 195 of their own had been returned.
The exchange took place a few days after a Russian military cargo plane carrying nine Russians and 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war crashed over the Belgorod region of Russia.
Russia claimed that Ukraine shot down the aircraft using missiles supplied by the West, but Ukraine has not verified nor refuted this claim and has demanded an international probe. A Russian teenager found guilty of damaging a railway track close to St Petersburg received an eight-year prison sentence.
Since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started almost two years ago, Russian officials have connected multiple attacks on trains intended to hamper supplies to the front lines of the war in Ukraine to pro-Ukrainian sabotage groups. The internal espionage service of Ukraine has also been charged with setting off explosives on Russian railway lines.
Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Minister of Defense, has instructed defense contractors to “quit playing around” with increasing the output of self-propelled artillery systems.
To oppose Vladimir Putin in the 2018 presidential election, Russian anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin delivered 105,000 signatures to the Central Election Commission (CEC). The CEC will verify the legitimacy and caliber of the signatures that Nadezhdin and other prospective contenders have provided, and next month it will declare whom will be joining Putin on the ballot.
