Nadezhdin previously stated that he believes the CEC will have to allow him to run in the March 2024 presidential election due to his widespread popularity and that he wanted as many uncontestable signatures as possible so the CEC could not disqualify him. ISW assessed on January 23 that the Kremlin may intend to use the March 2024 election as an unofficial referendum on Russia's war in Ukraine by allowing Nadezhdin to run in an election that portrays Russian President Vladimir Putin (and by extension his war in Ukraine) as overwhelmingly popular, but the CEC’s February 5 announcement suggests that the Kremlin may have backtracked from this plan out of concern that Nadezhdin might gain too many votes and reduce Putin's margin of victory below levels the Kremlin is willing to accept.[22] The CEC’s valid signature requirement is the logical mechanism for ending Nadezhdin's presidential campaign whether or not the Kremlin was initially willing to tolerate the campaign.
Russian officials and sources have increasingly censored and sought to discredit Nadezhdin after Nadezhdin's campaign gained significant notoriety while collecting signatures.[23] Russian CEC Deputy Chairperson Nikolai Bulaev claimed on February 2 that Nadezhdin's campaign collected dozens of signatures of deceased Russians and questioned the integrity of the Nadezhdin campaign.[24] Russian opposition outlet Novaya Gazeta recently reported that Nadezhdin's campaign struggled to find a printing house to print copies of Nadezhdin's campaign newsletter, citing a source within the campaign.[25] Nadezhdin previously claimed that Russian state television attempted to censor him and his campaign.[26] A Russian ultranationalist milblogger cryptically suggested on January 30 that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) would “meet” with Nadezhdin prior to the election, implying that the FSB would interrogate or imprison him.[27]
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-5-2024
My peers, 20 and 30 year old men, took part in the Afghan war in 1979-1989. More than 546 thousand Soviet citizens went through this military conflict. The losses of our country amounted, according to various sources, from 14 to 15 thousand people. But the consequences of the war lasted for years and affected civil society within the USSR.
In 1992, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Justice published the collection “Crime and Offenses.” In the last pre-war year, 1978, 1.3 million crimes were registered, and in the first post-war year - 1990 - 2.78 million. According to Kommersant , in 1989 at least 3.7 thousand “Afghans” were convicted for murders and robberies. According to the USSR Ministry of Defense, 6,669 people became disabled.
My comrade Boris Nemtsov openly opposed the First and Second Chechen Wars. Many people were sent to the First Chechen War from Nizhny Novgorod, where Boris Efimovich was the governor. The dead in the two wars number in the thousands, the wounded in the tens of thousands. There were 13 thousand registered disabled participants in combat operations in Chechnya and Dagestan in 2001 .
Now thousands of sons of veterans of Afghanistan and Chechnya have been mobilized in the Northern Military District. Our government has found itself not in developing a strategy to increase the birth rate, but in consistently inflicting trauma on its people.
Boris Nemtsov collected a million signatures to show the President: citizens are against the First Chechen War. In 2024, you and I collected more than 200 thousand signatures for Russia to become peaceful again.
https://t.me/BorisNadezhdin/858
Russian losses in Ukraine are almost 400 000.