The Russsian Central Electoral Commission on Saturday rejected an application by a candidate calling for peace to stand in next year’s presidential elections.
The commission cited “mistakes in documents” submitted by Yekaterina Duntsova, a former journalist and city councilor campaigning “for peace and democratic processes,” Russian television reported.
Commission chairwoman Ella Pamfilova said the members unanimously rejected Duntsova’s bid to stand in polls that Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to win comfortably.
Photo: AFP
Putin confirmed this month that he would participate in the election, which is to be held over three days beginning March 15.
The commission said Duntsova could not go on to the next stage of gathering thousands of supporters’ signatures.
“You are a young woman, you have everything ahead of you,” Pamfilova told her.
Duntsova, 40, had filed documents to stand in the March race as an independent candidate. She was required to provide documents proving that a group of at least 500 people had held a meeting backing her.
“A people’s initiative is not needed, is not welcomed,” Duntsova told journalists afterward, saying she would not have time to file another application as an independent candidate.
She wrote on social media that she would file an appeal against the ruling with the Russian Supreme Court.
She also urged the leadership of Russian United Democratic Party Yabloko to nominate her as its candidate.
Yabloko, Russia’s oldest democratic party, “should not stand on the sidelines. Russians should have a choice,” she wrote on Telegram.
Duntsova told journalists on Saturday “we are now waiting for some official, public answer on whether [Yabloko] are prepared to support me so we meet the deadline” of Jan. 1.
Yabloko cofounder Grigory Yavlinsky said in a YouTube video broadcast on Saturday that the party is not nominating a candidate.
The 71-year-old was unable to comment on Duntsova’s request for nomination, saying he “had no idea” about her.
Candidates from political parties lacking lawmakers in the national parliament, such as Yabloko, have a less arduous procedure to participate than independents. They have to gather signatures of 100,000 supporters by the end of January, while independent candidates have to find 300,000.
Duntsova said she was sure her supporters had no illusions about the outcome of the presidential “elections” in inverted commas.
However, “you must not do nothing,” as standing as a candidate is the “last legal opportunity for citizens to express their disagreement with the policies of the current authorities,” she wrote on Telegram.
Pamfilova on Saturday said that 29 people have filed to run for the presidency.
Moscow has for years sidelined opposition figures from elections and political life, a clampdown that accelerated after the Kremlin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine last year.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
RSS