He was banned from running for president. He stills thinks only elections can change Russia

Despite being disqualified from running for president, Russian opposition politician Boris Nadezhdinstill thinks elections are the only way there can ever be a change of government in Russia.

"Elections in Russia now are not fair and not free," he told CBC Newsin a Zoom interview from Dolgoprudny, a town on the northern outskirts of Moscow.

"But I do not know another way to change the politics and the power in Russia."

Nadezhdin, who campaigned against the war and urged Russia to enter into peace talks, has repeatedly called Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine "a fatal mistake."

Heis convinced Putin's "politics have no future" in Russia even as the man who has ruled the countryfor abouta quarter of a century is slated to be re-elected in just over 10 days.

Hewas disqualified from the race last month, after the country's election commission claimed it found "irregularities," including the names of deceased people, amongthe more than 105,000 signatures he'd submitted in support of his campaign.

WATCH | Opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin on Russia's future:

Elections are Russia's only way to change, says banned anti-war presidential candidate

7 months ago

Duration 1:10

Despite being banned from running for president in Russia, opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin says elections are the only way the country's government will change.

Nadezhdinhas been participating in Russian elections for three decades, including serving in the State Duma,Russia's lower house of parliament, between 1999 and 2003. His political career includes closeconnections to opposition figures and Kremlin insiders.

While he has openly criticized the government on state-controlled media,he has thus far managed to escape the fate of many of Russia's other dissidentswho havebeen killed, jailedor have fled the country for their own safety.

Same goal; different approach

Nadezhdin says he has the same vision for Russia asAlexei Navalny, the opposition leader who diedlast month whileimprisoned in an Arctic penal colony; his supporters and some Western officials are accusing the Kremlin of directing his death.

Like Navalny, Nadezhdin says he hopes for a free Russia, where people are free to speak their mind without fear, and the absolute power of the Kremlin is curtailed.

However, they differ in approach, he says.

He says he would not urge people to take to the streets in protest, because it's too dangerous, given the state's often harsh and swift retribution.

Despite the Kremlin'scontrol ofthe country's political system, Nadezhdin insisted thatelections are the sole option, anddismissed any suggestion that Russia could only change through an uprising.

"Big revolution in Russia would be a very big problem for all the world," he said.

"The collapse of a big country with nuclear weapons is a nightmare."

In Russia's upcomingpresidential election, which runs March 15 to 17, Putin will be running against three candidateswho all support what the Kremlin calls its "special military operation" in Ukraine.

Controversy in previous elections

Putin, 71,is poised to easily win. In 2020, voters approved achangetothe constitution, allowing him to runfor president in 2024, and potentially again in 2030. With power centralized around the Kremlin andno meaningful opposition, Putin willlikely win a fifth term in an electoral system that many international observers say is plagued by corruption and vote manipulation.

At the time, Nadezhdin signed a letter urging Russian citizens to reject the changes. However, theywere passed in a controversialreferendum that independent election observers said was problematic,with concerns that voter turnout in some regions was artificially boosted.

Results from electronic voting have also been previously contested. The 2021 parliamentary election saw opposition groups and observers claimingsome of those results were manipulated. This upcoming presidential election will make the option available in 29 regions, including Crimea, which Russia illegally annexedin 2014.

More than 112 million people are eligible to vote in Russia, according to Russian officials. That alsoincludes occupied Ukrainian territory.Nearly twomillion Russian citizens living abroad are also eligible to vote.

Campaign signatures

Nadezhdin, 60, has launched a number of unsuccessful court appeals to overturn the decision to disqualify him.

Nadezhdin said he collected over 200,000 signatures and submitted about half of them to the electoral commission on Jan. 31. (Hisparty, the centre-right Civic Initiative,isn't represented in the Russian parliament. Thus, he was required to collect 100,000 votersignatures supporting his candidacy.)

SOTA Vision, an independent Russian news channel that operates mainly on Telegram, reporteda heavy police presence outside when Nadezhdin went to submit the signatures. He was barred from running just over a week later.

Nadezhdin told CBC News that scrutinizing signatures is a typical way for Russia's electioncommission to stop opposition candidates.

"It is very difficult to collect 200,000 signatures, and very easy to find some problems with letters and numbers," he said.

He has publicly vowed he will never give up, but also admits he has no chance of beingon the ballot for this election.He said heis using this time to raise his profile and plot for the next one. He believes it will take place much sooner than 2030, because he thinks pressure will build on Putin to step aside.

"More and more people understand the connection between Putin's politics and the problems with everyday life," he said.

He pointed to rising prices and drug shortages as some of the effects of the Western sanctionslevelled against Russia over the past two years since its invasion of Ukraine began.

Nadezhdin says he is confident that Putin's successor, should he appoint one,will return Russia to"a normal direction" because he believes lawmakers are tiring of the country's international isolation.

"They want to be in Europe again. They don't want to be in China or in North Korea."

A call for his arrest

Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Jan. 24 during a routine call with thepressthat the Kremlin didn't consider Nadezhdin a rival.

But less than a week later, Nadezhdin, who has appeared on Russian talk shows before, drew the ire of one of the country's biggest television hosts.

Vladimir Solovyov, who anchors the talk showEvening with Vladimir Solovyov,accused himof being a political prop.Without offering any evidence, Solovyov claimed on his Jan. 30 show that Nadezhdin was being financially supported by exiled opposition figures, and even members of Ukrainian intelligence.

He suggestedhe be arrested on charges for betraying the motherland.

When askedby CBC News why he thinks he hasn't yet been arrested for speaking out publicly, Nadezhdin said he wasn't quite sure, but that it may be because he hasn't criticizedPutin personally just his politics.

He called the Russian president "very strong leader," butalso someone whose head is stuck in the 19th century and is more concerned about having a strong militarythan being a country where "educated and free people" want to live.

Russia hasa historyof jailing political dissidents. Over the fall, a Russian artist was sentencedto sevenyears in prison for replacing supermarket price tags with stickers protesting the war.

Nadezhdin says if he is ever elected, his first decree will be to free political prisoners.

"We should change the politics of Russia.

"The track of militarism, the track of isolation, the track of authoritarianism is very bad ... for Russia."