Russian authorities have continued to repress what little internal opposition remains in the country, detaining a well-known blogger and taking steps to prevent a local politician from running for parliament.

Blogger Ilya Remeslo was a staunch supporter of Vladimir Putin until he took a dramatic U-turn last March, calling the president a “war criminal and thief” and saying he should resign.

He has now been in preventive detention for two months on suspicion of spreading false information against the military.

On the other hand, Boris Nadezhdin has been convicted of “displaying extremist symbols”, a sentence that prevents him from collecting signatures for the parliamentary elections in September.

Nadezhdin, 63, rose to prominence two years ago when he tried to run for president on a pacifist platform, but was ultimately barred because election authorities ruled that the signatures he had submitted were defective.

There are few genuine opposition politicians left in Russia, and former deputy Nadezhdin has presented himself rather as a pro-peace politician.

Most went into exile abroad, while the most prominent figure, Alexei Navalny, died suddenly in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024. Russia said he died of natural causes, but the United Kingdom and four European countries , externalThey have said they are confident he was “poisoned with a lethal toxin.”

Nadezhdin was initially declared a “foreign agent” last week before being detained on Monday over a video he reposted in 2023 that briefly showed an image of Navalny. He has also been banned from leaving Russia.

Being declared a foreign agent would likely have prevented him from running for office, but until he was convicted of “extremist symbols,” a loophole meant he could still have gathered signatures to register as a candidate.

He can still appeal against the ruling, which fined him 1,000 rubles (£9.50; $13).

Nadezhdin suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes, and fell briefly when he appeared in court in his hometown of Dolgoprudny, just north of Moscow.

Denying the charges against him, he said his real goal was to silence him and prevent him from running for the Duma (Russian parliament). He also told the court that he would not be able to pay any fines because all his accounts had been frozen.

Later on Friday, blogger Remeslo also appeared in court and was remanded in custody for two months. His lawyer said he had been taken to Moscow after being detained hours earlier in his hometown of St. Petersburg.