Russian Election Commission finds 'irregularities' in Boris Nadezhdin's presidential candidacy

Russian officials say they have found "mistakes" in presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin's attempt to register for the upcoming presidential election.
Nadezhdin has spent weeks criticizing longtime President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin's military offensive in Ukraine, which is almost in its third year.
Nadezhdin, 60, caused queues across Russia in January. His supporters put their signatures so that he can be registered as an official candidate.
This week he submitted the required 100,000-plus signatures to the Central Election Commission, which is expected to rule next week on whether he will be allowed to participate in the vote.
"When we see dozens of people who are no longer on this Earth, and their signature is available, it calls into question the ethical standards that are used ... including by the people who collect them," said the commission's deputy chairman Nikolai Bulaev .
Nadezhdin and another candidate - the communist Sergey Malinkovich - will appear before the commission on January 5, where the officials will show them the "results of the verification procedure".
Nadezhdin, who has spent weeks criticizing President Putin and the nearly two-year offensive in Ukraine, rejected the commission's accusations.
"We are all more alive than the living," he said, posting pictures on Telegram of people lining up to sign in his support.
He invoked the Russian literary classic Dead Souls to mock election officials.
"If someone sees dead souls in my lists, these questions should not be addressed to me. It is more for the church or the exorcists," he said.
In another publication, Nadezhdin reiterated that he would sue the electoral commission if it forbade him to run.
In an interview with AFP last month, he suggested that Putin's decision to launch an offensive in Ukraine in 2022 was "disastrous".
Many were surprised he was allowed to advance this far in the voting process.
Political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya believes that the election commission's comments are a sign that Nadezhdin will not be allowed to participate in the elections.
"The Kremlin began to prepare the public for the decision to ban the Nadezhdin candidacy," she wrote on Telegram. /BGNES