MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Kremlin on Wednesday said it did not consider Boris Nadezhdin, a former opposition lawmaker seeking to run for president on an anti-war ticket, as a serious rival to President Vladimir Putin.
Nadezhdin, 60, is currently trying to collect 100,000 signatures by the end of January to be registered as a candidate in the March 15-17 presidential election.
In recent days, some Russians opposed to what Moscow calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine have queued up in the cold to offer their sigantures in his support.
When asked on Wednesday if Nadezhdin was a rival who posed a political threat to Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “Not at all, we don’t see him as a rival. Any citizen has the right to run for president if they meet a number of conditions.”
Putin, in power as either president or prime minister since the end of 1999 and in control of all the state’s levers, is widely expected to win another six-year term in March.
Nadezhdin’s supporters say he has passed the 100,000 siganture mark, garnering considerable support in Moscow and St Petersburg, but still needs more from other parts of Russia because the signatures need to be spread across at least 40 regions of the world’s largest country.
The Kremlin says most Russians back what it casts as Moscow’s quest to ensure its own security in Ukraine.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
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