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Wall Street Journal: Russia’s opposition candidates struggle to make a mark in election

Published Sept. 17, 2021 at 6:00 pm

A view of the liberal Yabloko party campaign banner featuring candidates in the upcoming election to the Russian State Duma, including Andrei Pivovarov, former head of the exiled Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky's pro-democracy group Open Russia (that was outlawed in 2017) - who is being held behind bars since his detention in May on charges with involvement with an "undesirable" organisation, in the southern city of Krasnodar on Sept. 6, 2021.

When Boris Vishnevsky went to check the photo and biographical material that Russia’s election commission planned to post for his candidacy in this weekend’s parliamentary elections, he thought he was seeing double.

Another candidate with the same name was listed alongside him. Then he saw another. They even looked like him, a balding 65-year-old with a stubbly beard.