One of Russia’s most prominent anti-war politicians, Boris Nadezhdin, fled Russia and announced his arrival in France on Monday, days after he was barred from running in parliamentary elections this fall.
Nadezhdin was prohibited from running after being charged with displaying “extremist symbols,” part of the Kremlin’s ramp-up in pressure on opposition figures ahead of the September vote.
In a video shot in front of the Eiffel Tower, Nadezhdin said he had managed to escape the country amid the repression of anti-war voices in Russia.
“The good news is I’m alive and free. But sadly, not yet in Russia,” Nadezhdin said in the video, which was posted on the Telegram messaging app.
Russian authorities had previously barred Nadezhdin from leaving the country amid an ongoing bankruptcy case against him and had branded him a foreign agent as the Kremlin undertook a an effort to remove prominent anti-war politicians from campaigning for the parliamentary elections.
Nadezhdin did not explain how he managed to flee the country.
In an interview last month with The Washington Post, Nadezhdin said he feared for his life and would seek to leave Russia at the first opportunity.
He said that his lawyer was appealing the travel ban and that he was withdrawing completely from opposition politics in Russia because the government had made it impossible.
“We know very well the fate of [Boris] Nemtsov and [Alexei] Navalny,” he told The Post, referring to two prominent opposition politicians who were killed.
Nemtsov was shot on a bridge near the Kremlin in 2015, just days before he was due to lead a protest of Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine. Navalny, according to Western governments, was poisoned in 2024 in a Russian prison.
“I am very worried,” Nadezhdin said. “The situation is very tough for me,”
In his social media post from Paris on Monday, Nadezhdin said he would now “take stock of the situation and figure out how to go on living.”
He promised to provide updates about his plans. He did not respond immediately to a request for further comment.
Nadezhdin first rose to prominence as an opposition politician when he campaigned against the war in Russia’s 2024 presidential election, winning hundreds of thousands of signatures in support until the authorities refused to register his candidacy.
In the interview with The Post, Nadezhdin said he had faced pressure from the Kremlin during the 2024 campaign but said what he is facing now is “much worse.”
The government has also ramped up pressure on the liberal-leaning Yabloko Party ahead of the election, which is seeking to campaign under the slogan “For Peace and Freedom” — a pointed message against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s push for conquest.
Last week, the Central Election Commission registered Yabloko’s participation in the September vote, but the party has been barred from running in urban strongholds where it is most popular, including St. Petersburg and the neighboring Karelia region.
More than a dozen of Yabloko’s members have also faced charges they displayed allegedly extremist symbols, including by making posts about Navalny, and as a result were barred from running in federal and regional elections. In Nadezhdin’s case, the alleged extremist symbol he was accused of displaying involved sharing a link to a video containing an image of Navalny.
For his current campaign, Nadezhdin collected signatures under the slogan “Peace. Development. Honest Elections. Strong Cities.” He campaigned for an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine and also for ending internet restrictions, which have caused widespread anger across Russia.
Nadezhdin was banned from leaving the country days after he told a prominent Moscow journalist that he was worried about the consequences of his anti-war stance in an interview aired on “The Breakfast Show,” a YouTube channel.
“If I were young and single, I’d go to prison without a second thought and keep pushing my line,” he said in the interview when asked about leaving the country. “But when you’re not that young, not in great health and you’ve still got kids to raise, you can’t help but think twice about it.”
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