Anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin Leaves Russia

Submission statement: one of the last political opponents to Vladimir Putin's regime has left Russia after years of dissidence, following severe threats to his freedom and life, further entrenching Putinism' hold on the country.

Boris Nadezhdin was one of Russia's last dissidents and unsuccessfully attempted to run against Putin in the 2024 presidential election, which saw the Russian dictator "win" nearly 90% of the vote in an election largely dubbed as a sham by international observers.

Nadezhdin, who served as an advisor to Boris Nemtsov, assassinated in 2015 in front of the Kremlin, belonged to the liberal opposition to Vladimir Putin, and unlike other opponents, had opted to keep participating in the increasingly rigged electoral system under Putinism, even running as a primary candidate for United Russia, Putin's party, in an attempt to "change the system from the inside".

As Russia under Vladimir Putin transitioned from a hybrid regime to a full dictatorship, Nadezhdin continued to participate in elections, and ran as a presidential candidate against Putin in 2024, federating Russian opposition in exile from Yulia Navalnaya to Maxim Katz or Mikhail Khodorkovsky behind his bid, but was disqualified on "technical grounds". His platform focused on ending the war in Ukraine through negotiations with the West, stressing the economic cost of the war on the average Russian and expressing worries that war costs may lead Russia to become a "vassal of China".

Nadezhdin, one of the last Russian dissidents to remain in the country, was recently targeted by home arrest and trials over the "spread of terrorist material" for posting pictures of Alexey Navalny, disqualified from running in October's legislative elections and labelled as a "foreign agent". He had expressed worries about his and his family's safety; it is not immediately clear how he arrived in France.

Boris Nadezhdin's exile after years of internal resistance is the latest sign that Vladimir Putin's regime no longer tolerates even low-level token opposition to the invasion of Ukraine and has completely locked down public discourse around its narrative of a war against the "Collective West".