\n<\/p>\n
His surname comes from the Russian word for hope \u2014 and for hundreds of thousands of antiwar Russians, that is, improbably enough, what he has become.<\/p>\n
Boris B. Nadezhdin is the only candidate running on an antiwar platform with a chance of getting on the ballot to oppose President Vladimir V. Putin in Russia\u2019s presidential election in March<\/a>. Russians who are against the war have rushed to sign his official petition inside and outside the country, hoping to supply enough signatures by a Jan. 31 deadline for him to succeed in joining the race.<\/p>\n They have braved subzero temperatures in the Siberian city of Yakutsk. They have snaked down the block in Yekaterinburg. They have jumped in place to stay warm in St. Petersburg and flocked to outposts in Berlin, Istanbul and Tbilisi, Georgia.<\/p>\n They know that election officials might bar Mr. Nadezhdin from the ballot, and if he is allowed to run, they know he will never win. They don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cBoris Nadezhdin is our collective \u2018No,\u2019\u201d said Lyosha Popov, a 25-year-old who has been collecting signatures for Mr. Nadezhdin in Yakutsk, south of the Arctic Circle. \u201cThis is simply our protest, our form of protest, so we can somehow show we are against all this.\u201d<\/p>\n The grass-roots mobilization in an authoritarian country, where national elections have long been a Potemkin affair<\/a>, has injected energy into a Russian opposition movement that has been all but obliterated: Its most promising leaders have been exiled<\/a>, jailed<\/a> or killed<\/a> in a sweeping crackdown<\/a> on dissent that has escalated with the war.<\/p>\n With protests essentially banned in Russia and criticism of the military outlawed, the long lines to support Mr. Nadezhdin\u2019s candidacy have offered antiwar Russians a rare public communion with kindred spirits whose voices have been drowned out in a wave of jingoism<\/a> and state brutality for nearly two years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Many of them don\u2019t particularly know about or care for Mr. Nadezhdin, a 60-year-old physicist who was a member of Russia\u2019s Parliament from 1999 to 2003, and who openly acknowledges lacking the charisma of anti-Kremlin crusaders like Aleksei A. Navalny, the jailed opposition leader.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But with a draconian censorship law stifling criticism of the war, Mr. Nadezhdin\u2019s supporters see backing him as the only legal way left in Russia to demonstrate their opposition to Mr. Putin\u2019s invasion of Ukraine. And they like what the candidate is saying \u2014 about the conflict driving Russia off a cliff; about the need to free political prisoners, bring the troops home and make peace with Ukraine; about Russia\u2019s anti-gay laws being \u201cidiotic.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe purpose of my participation is to oppose Putin\u2019s approach, which is leading the country to a dead end, into a rut of authoritarianism, militarization and isolation,\u201d Mr. Nadezhdin said in a written response to questions from The New York Times.<\/p>\n \u201cThe more votes that a candidate against Putin\u2019s approach and the \u2018special military operation\u2019 receives, the greater the chances are for peace and change in Russia,\u201d he added, using the Kremlin\u2019s term for the war to avoid running afoul of Russian law.<\/p>\n He has dismissed questions about his safety, noting in a YouTube appearance this past week that, in any case, the \u201ctastiest and sweetest years of my life are already in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Kremlin tightly controls the election process to ensure Mr. Putin\u2019s inevitability as the victor, but allows nonthreatening opponents to run \u2014 to provide a veneer of legitimacy, drive turnout at the polls and give Russians opposed to his rule an outlet for venting their dissatisfaction. So far, 11 people, including Mr. Nadezhdin and Mr. Putin, have been allowed to register as potential candidates and are collecting signatures.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Many of Mr. Nadezhdin\u2019s newfound supporters accept that he might have initially been viewed as just a useful tool for the Kremlin \u2014 a 1990s-era liberal with a folksy grandpa vibe who is willing to play the state\u2019s game. <\/p>\n Of particular suspicion is his work in the 1990s as an aide to Sergei V. Kiriyenko, a prime minister under President Boris N. Yeltsin who is now the top Kremlin official responsible for overseeing domestic politics.<\/p>\n Skeptics also point to Mr. Nadezhdin\u2019s presence on state television, where he has contributed to an illusion of open debate by serving as a token liberal voice, there to be shouted down by pro-Putin propagandists. Opposition figures the Kremlin considers a real threat, such as Mr. Navalny, have long been barred from appearing, let alone running for president<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr. Nadezhdin has countered<\/a> that if he were a Kremlin marionette, he would not be scrambling for signatures and money, nor would the main state television channel have excluded his name from its list of presidential candidates.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHe may well turn out to be a decorative candidate, but if so, there\u2019s a sense that everything hasn\u2019t gone according to plan,\u201d said Tatyana Semyonova, a 32-year-old programmer who showed up at a crowded courtyard in Berlin to sign her name.<\/p>\n She said she didn\u2019t have any particular affinity for Mr. Nadezhdin but was signing as an act of protest.<\/p>\n Pavel Laptev, a 37-year-old designer standing next to Ms. Semyonova in line, said that even the smallest chance to change something should not be wasted. \u201cEven if he is a decorative candidate, once he has all this power, maybe he will decide he\u2019s not so decorative,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The unexpected groundswell of support for Mr. Nadezhdin has presented the Kremlin\u2019s political maestros with a thorny question in the first presidential vote since Mr. Putin launched his invasion: Will they allow an antiwar candidate of any stripe to stand for election?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI will be surprised, surprised but delighted, if I see you on the electoral ballot,\u201d Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist based in Berlin, told Mr. Nadezhdin this past week during a YouTube show<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m not convinced that our political management at this stage in its development, of its evolution, can afford to take such risks.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Nadezhdin\u2019s campaign says it has far surpassed the 100,000 total signatures required, but a candidate is allowed to submit only a maximum of 2,500 from any single Russian region. On Friday, his campaign said it was on track to gather enough signatures from regions inside Russia and would not need any from abroad.<\/p>\n But even if Mr. Nadezhdin amasses enough signatures, the Russian authorities could find a way to disqualify him. The long, visible lines of support, he has said, will make that harder to do.<\/p>\n Many antiwar Russians initially coalesced around Ekaterina S. Duntsova, a little-known former television journalist and local politician who launched a campaign in November and quickly rose to prominence. But the Central Electoral Commission rejected her application to become a candidate because of what she called trivial mistakes in her paperwork.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n