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Hackers Target Campaign Website for Russia's Anti-War Presidential Hopeful

Russian presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin. Anatoly Maltsev / EPA / TASS

The website for anti-war presidential hopeful Boris Nadezhdin experienced an outage on Wednesday that his campaign said was caused by a denial-of-service attack.

“Our website has again been subjected to a DDoS attack. The malfunctions will be repaired as soon as possible,” Nadezhdin wrote on the messaging app Telegram.

The Moscow Times was unable to access the website as of Wednesday afternoon.

Nadezhdin had previously said his campaign website was hacked on Jan. 17.

Nadezhdin, 60, said Tuesday he had collected the 100,000 signatures of endorsement required under Russian election laws for candidates running from political parties that do not have representation in parliament.

But his campaign stressed that it aims to collect 150,000 signatures to send to Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) to avoid any mistakes in the paperwork.

The CEC last month cited improper signatures when barring another anti-war presidential hopeful, Yekaterina Duntsova, from running in the March election.

Nadezhdin is a veteran politician running from the center-right Civic Initiative party who calls himself a “principled opponent” of President Vladimir Putin’s policies.

The Kremlin said Wednesday it does not view Nadezhdin as a serious rival to Putin, who is widely expected to win his fifth overall presidential term.

Nadezhdin openly calls for ending the war against Ukraine, promises to end mobilization, return Russian soldiers home and free political prisoner if elected.

Thousands across Russia have in recent weeks left signatures for Nadezhdin to allow him to appear on the ballot in what some see as a form of anti-war protest in the face of the Kremlin’s widening crackdown on dissent.

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