Who is Boris Nadezhdin – the anti-war candidate for the Russian presidency?

Boris Nadezhdin, a 60 years old politician, has had a long political career. He has been a municipal councilor in the Moscow region, a State Duma deputy from the liberal party “Union of Right Forces”, and a regular visitor of propaganda talk shows on Russian TV, where he speaks as an expert with liberal views. Until October 31, 2023 - the day Nadezhdin announced his candidacy in the presidential elections 2024 - most Russians were hardly aware of his persona.

As a presidential contender, Nadezhdin stands out for putting an end to the war with Ukraine, release of political prisoners and democratic reforms in Russia.

Many are convinced that Nadezhdin's nomination is a well thought out plan orchestrated by the presidential administration. Even his surname has roots in the word "hope" in Russian. Nevertheless, this has not prevented Nadezhdin from gaining the almost unanimous support of the Russian opposition. After the Central Electoral Committee refused to register Ekaterina Duntsova as a candidate, Nadezhdin became the only anti-war presidential hopeful.

In this article REM provides a portrait of Boris Nadezhdin, describing his life and political career.

Beginning of political career

Boris Nadezhdin was born in 1963 in Tashkent, the capital of modern Uzbekistan. In 1969, his family moved to Dolgoprudny, a city in the Moscow region. In Moscow, Nadezhdin studied physics, mathematics and law, and after the graduation he was mainly engaged in scientific research and teaching in the 1980s.

Boris Nadezhdin's political career began in 1990 as he became chairman of the Dolgoprudny Council of Deputies. He remained council member until 1997.

In 1991, Nadezhdin joined the “Democratic Russia Movement” which participated in the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in 1993. The movement stood for the development of democracy, integration with the CIS countries and independence of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.

In 1995, Boris Nadezhdin ran for a seat in the State Duma from the moderate liberal “Party of Russian Unity and Accord” but failed to get into the parliament.

Since 1997, Nadezhdin worked in the Russian Government Office. He was first an assistant to First Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, and then became an assistant to Prime Minister Sergey Kiriyenko.

Work for Sergey Kiriyenko, an official in Putin's administration

Kiriyenko is now the First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Russian Presidential Administration, in charge of the country's domestic policy. In 1998, Kiriyenko served as Prime Minister of the Russian Federation for four months, being only 35 years old by that time.

To put it in his own words, Nadezhdin “has been Kiriyenko's right-hand man since 1997” and “helped him get the picture of work at the Ministry of Fuel and Energy”. In 1999-2000, Nadezhdin and Kiriyenko worked together on the political council of the movement “New Force”.

Citing sources in the Presidential Administration, the Telegram news channel “Mozhem Obyasnit” reported that “twenty-six years later, in 2023, Kiriyenko allegedly personally approved Nadezhdin's candidacy for the presidential elections”. At the same time, the same source emphasized that Boris Nadezhdin was breaking the promises he made to Kiriyenko with his campaign.

“[Kiriyenko] is in f*ucking shock. They agreed that Nadezhdin is not going to talk shit about Putin and the SMO, but in reality we got a real shitstorm” - said one of the sources to “Mozhem Obyasnit”.

At the same time, the headquarters of Boris Nadezhdin denied in an interview to “The Insider” that the candidate had been approved by Kiriyenko, adding that Nadezhdin had not coordinated his nomination with Sergey Kiriyenko.

Friendship with Boris Nemtsov and election as a deputy

Nadezhdin continued his cooperation with Kiriyenko in the “Union of Right Forces”, a movement founded in 1999. It was created as an electoral bloc of liberals to participate in the 1999 State Duma elections.

The main actors of this right-liberal party were the ideologist and leader of Russia's economic reforms Anatoly Chubais, former First Deputy Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, former State Duma deputy Irina Khakamada, and the first governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region Boris Nemtsov.

In the 1999 parliamentary elections, Nadezhdin was elected to the State Duma.

In the same year, he became chairman of the “Union of Right Forces” branch in the Moscow region, and “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” noted: “It is no secret that Nadezhdin is one of the closest people to Nemtsov, and now one of the largest party structures will actually be under his personal control”.

In 2003, the “Union of Right Forces” failed to pass the electoral threshold in the parliamentary elections, and its chairman, Boris Nemtsov, left his office. A few years later, in 2008, Nemtsov left the party altogether.

“Borya is my comrade. I am very sorry that it ended up this way. The only thing I can say is that the problem is rather personal than political”, said Nadezhdin at the time.

That same year, 2008, the “Union of Right Forces” split, the party announced its self-dissolution, and Nadezhdin's political career stalled. He returned to teaching at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, cooperating with the liberal party “Right Cause” at the same time. He took part in the elections to the Moscow Regional Duma from this party, but couldn’t succeed.

In 2015, Nadezhdin announced his willingness to run for the State Duma from the party in power “United Russia”, being criticized by other liberal politicians for that. However, Nadezhdin lost in the primaries.

Nadezhdin then tried to run in elections at various levels from the liberal-conservative “Party of Growth” several times. In 2019, not being a member of “Just Russia”, but with its support, Nadezhdin again became a member of Dolgoprudny Council of Deputies in the Moscow region. In 2021, the “Just Russia” party nominated Nadezhdin as its candidate for the State Duma elections. Nadezhdin failed to win those elections.

A regular on political talk shows

Alongside with his political career, Boris Nadezhdin was building another career – that of an expert on Russian television. Nadezhdin had been going to the talk shows since the early 2000s in order to appear on the screen and become recognizable. Nadezhdin believes that during the broadcasts he was successful in “shouting” to his target audience, to people who, citing Nadezhdin, “thank him for raising reasonable, right issues in an atmosphere of mass insanity”.

In recent years, Boris Nadezhdin kept on participating in Russian talk shows which became propaganda shows. There he appeared as a liberal speaker being in opposition to the current government.

In 2019, Nadezhdin spoke on the “Russia 1” TV channel about the “large-scale corruption” resulting out of Putin's power vertical. In 2020, he took part in the show “Mesto Vstrechi”, and criticized the Federal Law “on foreign agents” according to which any Russian might be declared a foreign agent by receiving a money transfer from abroad.

In 2021, Nadezhdin stated during one of the broadcasts that the Russian regime “will collapse” similar to the Soviet regime because the rating of the current government has “collapsed”. “You will notice it once [Vladimir Putin's rating] starts to fall dramatically. It has already fallen among young people. The only person with a rising rating is currently Navalny”, said Nadezhdin.

One year after the outbreak of war, the TV channels stopped inviting Boris Nadezhdin to TV talk shows. This happened after the following statement on the NTV channel on May 27, 2023: “Under the current political regime, we have no chance of returning to Europe. We just need to choose a different leadership of the country, which would stop this incident with Ukraine”.

Five months after having made this statement, Boris Nadezhdin announced his participation in the Russian presidential elections in 2024.

Presidential campaign and Nadezhdin's “manifesto”

On October 31, 2023, the political council of the “Civic Initiative” party approved the nomination of Boris Nadezhdin as a presidential candidate. In the 2018 presidential elections, “Civic Initiative” nominated a different “oppositional” candidate – journalist and Vladimir Putin's goddaughter Ksenia Sobchak. She received 1.6% of the vote, and after the elections she’s been referred to as a “spoiler candidate”. Boris Nadezhdin does not take comparisons with Ksenia Sobchak's campaign seriously and claims to be an independent candidate.

“I was recently told that “Channel One” broadcasted a list of all presidential candidates for the first time, and I was the only one not mentioned in the list. Could it be the case with a Kremlin puppet? If I were one of them, would I have any problems collecting signatures or finding finances for my election fund? I would immediately receive money transfers from some funds, like Putin does. One just needs to open financial reports of the candidates to understand who is a puppet and who is not”, Nadezhdin explained.

Boris Nadezhdin describes his motivation for running in the elections in his manifesto.

“I am going to the elections because I am convinced – today it is my duty to my country, to my ancestors and my descendants. In the last hundred years we have gone through turmoil and collapse twice. And yet again we are getting into the rut of authoritarianism and militarization. I will not forgive myself if I don't make an attempt to stop it”.

According to his own statement, Boris Nadezhdin is going to the elections as an opponent of Vladimir Putin.

“For almost 25 years Putin has been consistently destroying the key institutions of the modern state – an independent parliament, an independent court, federalism, local self-government, freedom of speech, fair elections, real competition in the economy and politics. State propaganda transforms Russian citizens from “reasonable humans” into “humans who hate”. The State Duma passes laws that can be used to imprison or deprive of property any person, just if some boss doesn’t like this person. The country is sliding further and further into medieval feudalism and obscurantism”.

In the same text, Nadezhdin defined the war with Ukraine as Putin's “fatal mistake” and stated that “not a single proclaimed goal of the SMO has been fulfilled” (initially, Vladimir Putin named “denazification” and “demilitarization” of the state as key goals in the war with Ukraine).

Nadezhdin qualifies Putin's resignation from the presidency as “the first step necessary” on the way of “turning to the future”. The politician sees his mission in leading the country through the transition period.

Should Nadezhdin be elected, he promises to release political prisoners and begin negotiations with Ukraine, though he considers them to be hard.

“You know, I think that such negotiations are going to be hard. When I become president, I’ll execute the following plan: I will propose a ceasefire straight away, that is, to stop shooting”, shared Nadezhdin with the journalist of “Nastoyasheye Vremya”.

Supporters and opponents of nomination

In Kremlin Boris Nadezhdin is not considered to be a rival to Putin, according to president's press secretary Dmitry Peskov. Nevertheless, many politicians, activists and public figures in Russia and abroad have assured their support to Nadezhdin.

One of the first to support Nadezhdin was presidential candidate Ekaterina Duntsova, who was not approved to take part in the elections by the Russian Central Election Commission because of her anti-war position. Back in November, they agreed to join forces to collect signatures, and in January she agitated her supporters to help Nadezhdin in this respect.

Following Duntsova, Nadezhdin was also supported by Russian oppositionists in exile. One of the first to do so was former municipal deputy and blogger Maxim Katz, who recorded a video in support of Nadezhdin.

Businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky also urged his supporters to sign in favor of nominating Boris Nadezhdin, even if his position doesn’t correspond with the position of Russian citizens.

Lubov Sobol, a member of the Russian Anti-War Committee and former lawyer of Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, also urged Russians to come to Boris Nadezhdin's campaign offices. The same position was expressed by YouTube blogger Michael Naki, who wrote that he “neither harbored any illusions regarding the March voting being wrongly qualified as elections nor took any special liking to Nadezhdin”.

Ivan Zhdanov, director of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, and Alexei Venediktov, former editor-in-chief of “Echo of Moscow” radio station, published a list of Nadezhdin's campaign offices in Russian regions. And political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann, agitating for signing for the candidate, said: “Any civic stirring is a good thing: this political season’s slogan is ‘Don't sleep, you'll freeze to death!’”.

However, some members of the opposition refused to support Nadezhdin's nomination. One of them is Vladimir Milov, former Russian deputy energy minister, author of reports on corruption in the country and vice president of the “Free Russia Foundation”. Milov decided not to urge his supporters to sign for Nadezhdin because the presidential candidate declared against the return of Crimea to Ukraine.

Former chairman of the Anti-Corruption Foundation Leonid Volkov also refused to support Nadezhdin directly. He recalled Nadezhdin liaising with the Just Russia party, taking part in the United Russia primaries, as well as participating in propaganda talk shows and, according to Volkov, “acting as a whipping liberal boy”. At the same time, Leonid Volkov considers everything happening around Nadezhdin's campaign as events of “phenomenal value”, and believes that the presidential administration “miscalculated badly” by allowing Nadezhdin to collect signatures. “People stood in lines to nominate a candidate associated with anti-Putin, anti-war agenda. It is a must to sign up for him. And in order not to get disappointed – just don't get charmed. We make no commitments to Boris Nadezhdin, and he makes no commitments to us”, said Volkov.

Signatures for Nadezhdin's nomination were collected in over 100 cities in 70 regions of Russia and in many countries around the world. Just in four weeks in January, Nadezhdin collected over 200.000 signatures in support of his nomination for the Russian presidency.