Russian politician Boris Nadezhdin, accused of displaying “extremist symbols,” attends a court hearing in the town of Dolgoprudny outside Moscow, Russia. (AP Photo/Pavel Bednyakov)
A Russian court on Friday convicted opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin, a critic of President Vladimir Putin, of displaying “extremist symbols,” a ruling that will prevent him from running in elections for the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly, this year.The court in Dolgoprudny, a town on the northern outskirts of Moscow where he lives, found him guilty and fined him 1,000 rubles (about $13).Nadezhdin has previously criticized Putin over the Ukraine war and unsuccessfully sought to run against the president in the March 2024 election.The charges against the 63-year-old politician stemmed from a 2023 online interview in which he briefly showed a photo of another Putin critic, Alexei Navalny, who was then serving a 19-year prison sentence on extremism charges widely seen as politically motivated.
Navalny later died in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024.Nadezhdin dismissed the case against him as “ridiculous” and claimed that the authorities were trying to prevent him from campaigning in the parliamentary elections scheduled for September.A week ago, the Russian Ministry of Justice designated Nadezhdin a “foreign agent,” a designation that carries strong negative connotations and subjects individuals to increased government scrutiny.
The designation also bars him from holding any public office, but he is still able to continue his symbolic campaign for a seat in parliament until the ruling on Friday.He complained of feeling unwell during the hearing, which was interrupted briefly for a medical team to examine him. Before the hearing, he said that he was thinking about traveling abroad, but claimed that the authorities prevented him from leaving the country.In January 2024, Nadezhdin collected thousands of signatures when he publicly called for an end to the fighting in Ukraine.
However, he was removed from the ballot in March 2024 after Russia’s Supreme Court ruled that more than 9,000 signatures submitted by his campaign were invalid, enough to disqualify him. Putin faced only token opposition in the elections and easily won a fifth term.Since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Russian authorities have intensified their crackdown on dissent and freedom of expression, targeting human rights organizations, independent media, civil society groups, LGBT activists, and some religious groups.
Hundreds of people were imprisoned and thousands more fled the country.Another Putin critic arrestedAlso on Friday, Ilya Remyslow, a former pro-Kremlin activist and blogger who later became a critic of Putin, was arrested in St. Petersburg on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military — an accusation widely used against those who oppose government policies.The state-run TASS news agency reported that he would be transferred to Moscow to face a court hearing.In March, Remislo criticized Russian military action in Ukraine and called for Putin’s resignation. Shortly after, he was placed in a psychiatric facility and spent a month there, which he described as “punishment” for his statements.(with AP input)
