(Bloomberg) -- A politician campaigning to end Russia’s war in Ukraine has collected more than the 100,000 signatures required to challenge Vladimir Putin in March presidential elections. That doesn’t mean he’ll be allowed to run.

Supporters of Boris Nadezhdin, a member of the Civic Initiative party, braved freezing temperatures at times in long lines to add their names to his campaign application. While Russian authorities didn’t prevent the initiative, election officials must now approve the list of signatures and could deny Nadezhdin a place on the ballot. 

“I’m entering the elections as a principled opponent of the current president’s policies,” Nadezhdin said in a manifesto on his campaign website. “Putin sees the world from the past and is dragging Russia into the past.” 

Already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Josef Stalin, Putin is seeking a new six-year term in the elections that will take place as Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its neighbor enters its third year. The result is widely expected to be a formality, and so far no strong opponent to Putin has emerged.

“Nadezhdin is the system’s player, he won’t cause problems,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of the political consultancy R.Politik and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “They also didn’t expect him to collect those signatures.” 

Nadezhdin, 60, is a veteran of Russian politics. He served as a lawmaker in the lower house of parliament from 1999 until 2003, and is currently on the town council for Dolgoprudny, near Moscow. He has worked closely with Sergei Kiriyenko, a top Putin aide who currently oversees Kremlin domestic policy.  

Nadezhdin has frequently appeared on political talk shows on state television during the war, expressing criticism of the conflict and offering liberal views on Russia’s development. He could play a similar role in the elections, providing an outlet for discontent without challenging the Kremlin’s tight control.

“Putin made a fatal mistake by starting his special military operation,” Nadezhdin’s manifesto reads. “None of its stated goals have been fulfilled.”

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While Nadezhdin has declared his opposition to what Putin calls “the special military operation,” he avoids calling it a “war.” That would risk prosecution under Russia’s “fake news” law. 

For the Kremlin, his participation in the vote could be a way to gauge the level of anti-war sentiment in society. For Nadezhdin’s supporters, it’s a rare opportunity to voice dissatisfaction with the invasion amid the harshest crackdown on dissent in Russia since the Soviet era. 

That thousands have been arrested in Russia for speaking out against the war hasn’t seemed to deter his supporters. 

“People in these queues are signing up with hope,” Ekaterina Schulmann, a Berlin-based political scientist, said by phone. “These are legal, permitted, anti-war demonstrations. People see each other, they see they are not alone.” 

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The effort is not without risk for Nadezhdin, according to Stanovaya. “For the pro-war lobby, he is the enemy and they will just make another example of him and his supporters,” she said. 

He remains unbowed. “I can’t be scared by anything,” Nadezhdin said in a video conversation with Schulmann posted online. “I see all those people that support me, and I don’t belong to myself anymore.” 

The Kremlin may decide that “even such an alternative is too dangerous” to permit on the ballot, Schulmann said later by phone. “The people are too hungry for an alternative.” 

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