The Kremlin may allow the "anti -war candidate" elections: in ISW ​​called the reason

Analysts noted that referring to the Russian media that Boris Nadezhdin is the only candidate for presidential who publicly opposes the war in Ukraine. The politician himself claims that the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation (CEC) will be forced to register him as a candidate, given his support from the Russian public.

Thus, the election headquarters of the Nadezhdina has already collected more than 100,000 signatures required for registration of an independent election candidate. The report states that according to the Russian insider source, the Kremlin developed a mechanism for sending all the votes of the opposition in favor of Nadezhdin to give the voters the visibility of the choice and ultimately ensure the re -election of Vladimir Putin.

The source also stated that Nadezhdin would pay for the transfer of opposition votes. ISW believes that the Kremlin can try to use the presidential election as a "referendum" on the issue of war in Ukraine. "The Kremlin can decide to allow Nadezhdin to run as an anti -war candidate to use Putin's inevitably re -election as a positive referendum on war in Ukraine, as the Kremlin seeks to prepare for long -term military efforts," analysts say.

At the same time, Nadezhdin claims that it is not a "Kremlin puppet". We will remind, on December 8 Vladimir Putin announced his nomination for president. As the ISW analysts noted, he did it before the military, trying to give the impression that he was running at the request of Russian servicemen. The representative of the US Presidential Administration Joe Baiden John Kirby ironically spoke about the next nomination of Vladimir Putin on the post of President of the Russian Federation.