Not long ago, Boris Nadezhdine was still dreaming of the Kremlin. The Russian opponent now walks the streets of a suburban suburb in the Paris region, in a square red with flowers. The sixty-year-old has been exiled in France since August 3, after the proliferation of legal proceedings brought against him in Russia. He has been living in a hotel for about two weeks, without income and cut off from some of his loved ones. Boris Nadejdine had a few hours to pack his suitcase. His wardrobe is therefore limited to a few shorts, a yellow polo shirt and Crocs.
His teacup is half full. After all, he smiles, it is "much better than Lefortovo prison", well known to political opponents. And then “I have a new legal case almost every week,” he says, almost surprised, his eyes glued to his Telegram messaging. On Tuesday August 18, he was fined 100,000 rubles (around 1,000 euros), after an interview given to Meduza, an independent and unwanted media outlet in Russia. His highly publicized case illustrates the efforts of the Russian authorities to erase the last dross of the political opposition, before the legislative elections scheduled for September.
At the beginning of the summer, Boris Nadezhdine was still running for a deputy seat in the constituency of Dolgoprudny, a close suburb of Moscow. The collection of signatures was in full swing, with activists dressed in “Vote for Peace” t-shirts, distributing pacifist leaflets. But the clouds quickly darkened his electoral horizon. The sixty-year-old was first placed on the register of “foreign agents”, which invalidated his application. Then he was arrested and questioned for "dissemination of extremist content", offenses punishable by prison, and was banned from leaving the country.
An unexpected way out
Tried at the Dolgoproudny court, in the Moscow suburbs, Boris Nadejdine was the victim of discomfort in the middle of a hearing in mid-July. The emergency services had to wait in the corridor until the deliberations, before obtaining authorization to come and meet him, to take his pulse. The person responsible ultimately gets away with a drop in blood pressure and a fine of a thousand rubles (11 euros). A symbolic sum, but a very real warning. Four days later, the dreaded Federal Investigative Committee came knocking at his door, with a summons set for three days later.
During the night, by connecting to Gosuslugi, the administrative procedures portal, he discovered that the ban on leaving the territory had been lifted. Amazing coincidence. "Is it thanks to the appeal filed by my lawyers? Or did someone in the Kremlin decide that? I don't know," evades the person concerned. And besides, it doesn't matter. Boris Nadejdine has one or two days, at most, to flee. “It was a shocking decision.” He consults the Aeroflot airline website to find the quickest exit route with Russian papers and without a visa. It will be Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.
What’s next? A trip to the bank in the morning to exchange rubles for euros. Then departure to Sheremetievo airport in the company of his wife, in the evening, and going through customs. After Kazakhstan, the couple went to Istanbul, then finally Paris. “France will not hand me over to the Russian government,” he says, recalling a diplomatic address book built up over the years. And then I love France, having traveled there on many occasions.” He remembers a youthful trip, when he had breakfast on the Manche coast before driving to Nice for dinner.
His flight marks the final act of a slow disgrace. Boris Nadezhdine was first ousted from government bodies after leading the protest against the 2020 referendum, which offered Vladimir Putin two additional mandates. He then lost contact with the all-powerful Sergei Kirienko, head of the presidential administration. Then after the start of the "special military operation", the official name given by the Russian authorities to describe the invasion of Ukraine, he took a stand for peace and gradually disappeared from television sets, on which he had been a regular guest for twenty-five years.
“There are deaths in the Moscow region”
In 2024, his presidential candidacy was invalidated at the last minute by the electoral commission, while he brought together anti-war voices from all sides. After the election, “the political party [Civil Initiative] which had supported me was closed, and the members of my team received pressure,” he relates. Four officials are included in the register of “foreign agents”, and its campaign director has been stripped of his nationality. “I became toxic to most of my contacts.” Boris Nadejdine, despite everything, maintains some friendships. On occasion, some mayors and deputies of his generation still come to drink tea in his kitchen.
Until recently, he seemed to benefit from a certain form of leniency, the causes of which he himself claims to be unaware of. In July 2025, during a strike picket organized in front of the Duma, he was, for example, the only survivor of the police raid that took away his former campaign director and journalists. “I found myself all alone, without knowing why I had escaped arrest.” But the bubble finally burst during the summer, which immediately led to a shambles of lawsuits.
How to explain it? “This year, a larger part of the population is opposed to the war, and support for the president is declining,” analyzes Boris Nadejdine. The former candidate believes that inflation is now the main concern of Russians who attended his meetings. “Especially for the elderly or families with children. However, the average age of the Russian population exceeds 40 years.” The youngest cite the war first, or rather the fear of mobilization, but also the restrictions on the internet.
"The more problems an autocratic regime encounters, the more repression it increases. That's why I'm here."
Above all, "the war strikes again in Russia", continues Boris Nadejdine, sitting in the deserted hall of the hotel where he lives. "My electoral district has about a million inhabitants and almost every day Ukrainian strikes target Wildberries warehouses, oil installations and even civilian buildings. There are deaths in the Moscow region." Inflation and the intensification of strikes, now impossible to hide, represent a serious challenge for the authorities. “It becomes impossible for the government to tolerate contrary positions during the elections,” judges the opponent.
Procedures that target several opponents
As an admission of failure, he describes the mechanism of which he believes he was the victim: "Sometimes, opponents are included on the list of foreign agents by the Ministry of Justice. And sometimes, they are accused of extremism, or declared bankrupt. I have accumulated all the possible statuses." The sixty-year-old is the subject of procedures launched by the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of the Interior, the Federal Bailiff Service and the Nikolaevsk prosecutor's office. Boris Nadejdine denounces a “political decision” behind this sudden accumulation of procedures.
“The security services, led by the FSB, have been collecting information for years,” he says. "These files can stay for years on a shelf without moving. Then, it's like pressing a button. One page is sent to prosecutors, another to internal affairs..." At the police station, he notices that the officer receives documents by fax. “In short, I was accused of a case which had not been the subject of an investigation by the police, accuses Boris Nadejdine. When I asked him where this information came from, he told me that it was secret.”
Boris Nadezhdine notably accuses the governor of the Moscow region, Andreï Vorobiov, of being at the origin of his setbacks. But everything goes through the presidential administration. “A well-informed journalist told me that this official had gone to the Kremlin to obtain the green light,” he says. "I had a chance of being elected to the Duma in my constituency, the opponent wants to believe, without being able to prove it. Having such a deputy in his region would have been a defect for the governor."
The case of Boris Nadejdine is far from isolated. This is evidenced by the dozens of proceedings initiated against members of the liberal Yabloko party, the only political group to publicly demand a ceasefire in Ukraine. And his ban on participating in legislative elections, just confirmed by the Russian Supreme Court. Lev Chlosberg, one of its best-known figures, was sentenced Monday to eleven years in prison for having defended the idea of a ceasefire in Ukraine, in a video from January 2025.
“I have known him for years, and we are friends,” sighs Boris Nadezhdine, who would frequently visit him in his stronghold of Pskov. Like this day in October 2024, when the two men raise the possibility of detention. "Lev Chlosberg was absolutely convinced that he would be arrested one day, because he said he was already under pressure from the regional governor, remembers the sixty-year-old. He told me that he would always stay in Russia, with his people. I had chosen exile. I could not imagine living behind bars, because of my heart problems."
“The real influence of Russian exiles is limited”
This departure undoubtedly marks the end of a long career. “I dream of political change in Russia, and of being able to return there one day,” smiles the fatalistic emigrant. But "it won't be in a few months, probably, or even in a few years." His priority today is to manage current affairs, and in particular to resolve the fate of his remaining children, aged 12 and 15, who remain in Russia. He is already wondering, smiling, about the presence of fish in the Seine and about the upcoming mushroom picking, his two passions.
At this stage, Boris Nadejdine no longer plans to play a political role. Nor to join the opposition party in exile, Peaceful Russia, based in Berlin and founded by Ilia Yashin, who himself was detained for having denounced the war. “The real influence of the Russian opposition abroad is very limited,” observes the former legislative candidate. Boris Nadejdine therefore prefers to believe that new figures will emerge in Russia, despite the repression.
“It is entirely possible for the authorities to push Nadezhdine out of Russia. And it is entirely possible to ban the Yabloko party,” he summarizes, calmly blowing on his cup, in the middle of empty chairs. “But it is absolutely impossible to chase away tens of millions of people who are against the war and do not support Putin,” he wants to believe.
