Kremlin Critic Boris Nadezhdin Flees Russia
After being declared a 'foreign agent' and facing criminal prosecution, one of Vladimir Putin's last vocal critics left the country and said from Paris that he must figure out what to do next.
After being declared a 'foreign agent' and facing criminal prosecution, one of Vladimir Putin's last vocal critics left the country and said from Paris that he must figure out what to do next.
Russian opposition politician Boris Nadezhdin, until recently one of the few Kremlin critics still in Russia who were not in prison, announced on Monday that he had left the country. In a video message recorded in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the 63-year-old former State Duma deputy told his followers that he was alive and free.
"I have good news. I am alive and free. Unfortunately, I am not in Russia," Nadezhdin said in the video posted on his Telegram channel. "Now I need to think and figure out how to move forward. I will write about my plans later."
Nadezhdin became widely known in early 2024 when he attempted to challenge Vladimir Putin in the presidential election with an anti-war platform. His candidacy was ultimately rejected after the election commission found that more than 15% of the signatures of support he had collected were invalid. Putin declared a landslide victory on March 18, 2024, securing his fifth presidential term.
This summer, pressure on Nadezhdin intensified after he announced his candidacy for the September parliamentary elections in the town of Dolgoprudny. In July, the Russian Ministry of Justice declared him a "foreign agent," a designation that brings severe administrative restrictions and is routinely used by the Kremlin to suppress dissidents.
Shortly after, Nadezhdin was briefly arrested and faced charges of displaying "extremist symbols." The charge related to a video he shared on his social media in November 2023, which briefly showed an image of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny for 10 seconds. At a dramatic court hearing on July 17, 2026, in Dolgoprudny, where doctors had to intervene due to a spike in his blood pressure, he was fined 1,000 rubles (about $13).
Nadezhdin called the charges absurd, but the pressure eventually forced him to withdraw from the election campaign. Last week, in an interview with BBC Russian from an undisclosed location, he said his prospects were "unclear."
Nadezhdin was one of the few politicians who openly criticized Russia's offensive in Ukraine since its start in 2022. In an interview with the BBC earlier this year, he said that tens of millions of people in Russia are beginning to realize "that there is a direct link between their daily problems, such as healthcare, food prices, internet issues, and Vladimir Putin's policies."
His escape further illustrates the scale of repression against the opposition in Russia, where almost all significant Kremlin critics are now in prison, exile, or dead. According to data from the non-governmental organization OVD-Info, more than 2,000 people are currently detained in Russia for political reasons. The next presidential election is scheduled for 2030, when Putin will be 78 years old, and a 2020 constitutional amendment allows him to remain in power until 2036.
