Yekaterina Duntsova has recently become very popular in Russia as an anti-Putin, anti-war, democratic candidate

She recently held a voter meeting to get the signatures legally required as a first step to become a presidential candidate. It was not easy since the police visited all the notary offices and there was only one which continued to work. However, it was successfully done

Today she came to Central Election Commission and they said that the (verified) documents she had contained 100 errors, therefore they will not register her as a candidate. Notably, one of the "errors" was one signature which looked like a cat - it was later confirmed as a real one by SOTA, and Russian laws have no restrictions on signatures, one can even use an emoji. The CEC will only give an official conclusion tomorrow, which will prevent Yekaterina from going to court as soon as possible. As usual, more roadblocks from the government are expected, even for the other candidates

While Russian opposition forces are not united, the consensus seems to be to go and vote for any candidate that's not Putin, and Duntsova would be a great choice here. You may think something like "this is Putin's own election, no one else can win, it's stupid to even try". But it's not about winning since that's absolutely impossible and everyone knows that (she even openly says that). It's about showing that the are more anti-Putin people in Russia than one would think, about uniting them and showing their true voice. There is finally a legitimate, legal way to protest against the dictatorship and the war, even if the outcome is unclear

I wrote this post since Algolia showed no results about these events and I thought it would be great if HN audience knew what's happening, thank you for reading