Meet Boris Nadezhdin, Vladimir Putin’s brave challenger

“Idon’t have the charisma of Alexei Navalny or Boris Nemtsov. You can’t make Che Guevara out of me, no matter how hard you try. I have no illusions and don’t pretend to be a hero, God forbid. But it just so happened…” So speaks Boris Nadezhdin, a portly 60-year-old in glasses, a former physicist who spent the past 30 years inside Russian politics, mostly as someone’s deputy or aide, attracting little attention from the wider public.It is probably these dull Everyman qualities and a long and steady record of losing elections that persuaded the Kremlin to let him play a minor part in the farcical presidential poll on March 15th-17th. Vladimir Putin is certain to be elected to a fresh term. But the authorities have allowed Mr Nadezhdin to collect enough signatures to be included on the ballot.