Russian politician Boris Nadezhdin, accused of displaying “extremist symbols,” attends a court session 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 contesting this year’s elections to the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s Federal Assembly.The court in Dolgoprudny, a town on Moscow’s northern outskirts where he lives, convicted him and fined him 1,000 rubles (about $13).Nadezhdin has previously criticised 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 picture 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.Rejecting the case against him as “absurd”, Nadezhdin alleged that authorities were trying to prevent him from campaigning in September’s parliamentary election.A week ago, Russia’s Justice Ministry named Nadezhdin a “foreign agent”, a designation that carries strong negative connotations and subjects individuals to additional government scrutiny. The designation also bars him from holding public office, but he was still able to pursue his symbolic campaign for a parliament seat until Friday’s verdict.He complained of feeling unwell during the hearing, which was briefly interrupted for a medical team to examine him. Before the hearing, he said he was considering going abroad but alleged that authorities had barred him from leaving the country.In January 2024, Nadezhdin collected thousands of signatures as he openly called for an end to the fighting in Ukraine. However, he was kept off the March 2024 ballot 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 election 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 free speech, targeting rights organisations, independent media, civil society groups, LGBTQ+ activists and some religious groups. Hundreds of people have been jailed and thousands more have fled the country.Another Putin critic arrestedAlso on Friday, Ilya Remeslo, a former pro-Kremlin activist and blogger who later became a Putin critic, was arrested in St Petersburg on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military — an accusation widely used against those who oppose the government’s policies.The state-run Tass news agency reported that he would be taken to Moscow to face a court hearing.In March, Remeslo criticised Russia’s military action in Ukraine and called for Putin’s resignation. Soon after, he was placed in a psychiatric clinic and spent a month there, which he described as “punishment” for his remarks.(With AP inputs)
