Russia: Anti-war candidate lodges appeal after disqualification from presidential polls

An appeal has been filed with the Supreme Court by a former TV journalist who opposes Russia’s war in Ukraine and was disqualified from running for president of Russia on Saturday.

Yekaterina Duntsova’s candidature was unanimously rejected by the members of the central electoral commission due to “numerous violations” in the documents she had filed to support her campaign.

However, the forty-year-old claimed she had been wrongfully prevented from competing in a race that was mostly predicted to be won by incumbent Vladimir Putin, who has served as prime minister or president for more than 20 years.

She claimed that the authorities had denied certain young Russians a means of voicing their opinions inside a strictly regulated political system by preventing her from running.

That might encourage indifference and a voter boycott in the March election, she claimed.

The Central Election Commission claims that it only makes decisions based on the law and that it is responsible for ensuring that candidates for office follow the correct processes.

Speaking on Tuesday, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for the Kremlin, did not specifically identify Duntsova but stated that anybody who fulfilled the legal requirements might run for president under the constitution.

Putin, 71, has an approval rating of almost 80% according to polls cited by the Kremlin, which claims that the majority of Russians back Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine.

Putin has presented himself as the ideal leader to lead Russia to the predicted victory in the war in Ukraine by framing it as an existential struggle for a new global order with the West.

Strict regulations on “fake news,” enacted in response to Putin’s deployment of tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, stipulate harsh prison sentences for anyone found to have disseminated inaccurate information about the Russian military.

Putin’s detractors have either left the nation or are serving prison sentences, such as Alexei Navalny.

Duntsova stated that her followers would make an effort to observe the election process and that it was inevitable that some voters would sabotage their ballots in opposition to what she claimed to be the limited field of contenders.

(With agency inputs)