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When Boris Nadezhdin began campaigning for Russia’s parliamentary elections as an independent candidate over the summer, more than four years on from the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the politician was driven by a belief that Russians wanted peace. His experiment proved short-lived: Within weeks, authorities piled on such legal pressure that by late July, he felt compelled to leave the country or face likely imprisonment.

Nadezhdin, 63, is not a natural firebrand, and his campaign wasn’t radical. If he erred, he thinks it was by not fading into irrelevance after a failed bid for president two years ago. “I must have irritated some Kremlin officials,” Nadezhdin said in a video interview last month from Paris. One of the highest-profile government critics to flee Russia since 2022, he appeared exhausted by the events that had put him at the center of the Kremlin’s latest push to root out dissent.

When Boris Nadezhdin began campaigning for Russia’s parliamentary elections as an independent candidate over the summer, more than four years on from the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the politician was driven by a belief that Russians wanted peace. His experiment proved short-lived: Within weeks, authorities piled on such legal pressure that by late July, he felt compelled to leave the country or face likely imprisonment.

Nadezhdin, 63, is not a natural firebrand, and his campaign wasn’t radical. If he erred, he thinks it was by not fading into irrelevance after a failed bid for president two years ago. “I must have irritated some Kremlin officials,” Nadezhdin said in a video interview last month from Paris. One of the highest-profile government critics to flee Russia since 2022, he appeared exhausted by the events that had put him at the center of the Kremlin’s latest push to root out dissent.

The Russian government has little tolerance for genuine opposition, but certain figures have remained active in the political arena by policing their own speech. But ahead of this year’s State Duma elections—the first since the full-scale invasion—authorities began purging the last political elements advocating for peace. After Nadezhdin, they set their sights on the anti-war Yabloko party, which a court has barred from standing in the elections.

For the Kremlin, it’s important that the war in Ukraine has the veneer of public support. Speaking at a congress of the ruling United Russia party in August, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a packed conference hall that the Duma elections, held from Sept. 18 to 20, will “reaffirm the stability of the state” and “become an expression of the common will of millions of people.”

By the same token, while the tightly controlled elections present no real threat to Putin’s hold on power, they offer a chance for Russians to register their displeasure with the war. As Ukrainian drones strike deeper into........

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