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An antiwar politician has been rejected as a candidate in Russia's presidential ballot as the country prepares to go the polls next month.
The Central Election Commission declared more than 9,000 signatures gathered by high-profile candidate Boris Nadezhdin were invalid, enough to disqualify him from the ballot.
Candidates of all political parties not represented in Russian parliament — among them Mr Nadezhdin — are required to collect at least 100,000 signatures from supporters to run.
Election rules say potential candidates can have no more than 5 per cent of their signatures thrown out.
Mr Nadezhdin has openly called for a halt to the war in Ukraine and for starting a dialogue between Russia and Western nations.
The 60-year-old has previously told the ABC Russia's leadership "understand that I can rise very, very high" in polling because of his anti-war stance.
"I am absolutely sure that dozens of millions of people in Russia want to change the president, and they want Russia to be a peaceful and free country," he said.
Officials at the election commission on Thursday local time declined to postpone their decision. Mr Nadezhdin said he would appeal the disqualification in court.
"It's not me standing here," he said outside the commission. "Hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens who put their signatures down for me are behind me."
The move by the Central Election Commission provides an even smoother path for President Vladimir Putin to win a fifth term in power.
He faces only token opposition from pro-Kremlin candidates in the March 15-17 vote and is all but certain to win, given his tight control of Russia's political system.
Mr Putin is running as an independent candidate, and his campaign was required to gather at least 300,000 signatures in his support.
He was swiftly allowed on the ballot earlier this year, with election officials disqualifying only 91 out of 315,000 that his campaign submitted.
Here's what we know about the other election figures both accepted and rejected from the race so far.
Meet your approved candidates of 2024
Vladimir Putin
Party: Independent
Vladimir Putin has been Russian president since 2012, and has held a continuous position as either president or prime minister of Russia since 1999.
If he succeeds in next month's election, he will be president until at least 2030.
Vladislav Davankov
Party: New People
The youngest of all approved candidates at 39 years old, Mr Davankov has been a deputy chair of the State Duma since 2021.
The liberal-oriented New People party was the only parliamentary party in Russia not to support the independence of Ukraine's Donetsk and Lugansk regions prior to Russian invasion.
It instead abstained from voting.
Leonid Slutsky
Party: Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR)
The 56-year-old Slutsky has led the ultranationalist LDPR since 2022, and has previously served as a chairman of the Duma's Committee on International Affairs and Committee on the CIS, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots.
In 2018 he was accused by three Russian female journalists of sexual harassment, according to the BBC, but denied the accusations against him.
He was a member of the negotiating team for Russia in 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine.
The LDPR nominated him in late December but told media he "won't take away votes from the President of Russia".
"I won't call to vote against Putin," he said, according to the Moscow Times. "A vote for Slutsky and LDPR is absolutely not a vote against Putin."
Nikolay Kharitonov
Party: Communist Party
This is the second time 75-year-old Kharitonov has run against Putin after an unsuccessful bid in 2004 which saw him come in second place with 13.8 per cent of the vote.
He has been chair of the Committee on the Development of Far Eastern and Arctic regions since 2011.
He does not oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Following his nomination he told a party conference that "our task is to consolidate the people during the election campaign so that there is "victory, victory on all fronts", the Moscow Times reported.
Your 'where are they now' of 2018's failed presidential candidates
Sergey Baburin
Party: Russian All-People's Union (Rodina)
Baburin, a Russian nationalist politician and ex-leader of Rodina, received just 0.65 per cent of the vote in 2018 and finished last of all candidates.
He was backed by his party to run in the 2024 election and had the required number of signatures, but withdrew the day before they needed to be submitted on January 30, 2024.
Pavel Grudinin
Party: Independent
Grudinin was selected as the Communist Party's candidate in 2018.
In 2019 he announced he intended to run for the presidency again in 2024, but said at the time he would back a different Communist Party candidate if he wasn't selected.
In 2021 he was barred from running in the legislative election. He said he would appeal the decision.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky
Party: Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR)
Zhirinovsky, a right-wing populist and former leader of the LDPR, died in 2022. He had run in every presidential election, excluding 2004, since they were established in 1991.
He was known for his history of outlandish threats, including to unleash nuclear weapons, flood Germany with nuclear waste or seize Alaska from the US, according to Reuters.
"My name Vladimir means 'rule the world'. Let us Slavs rule the world in the 20th century," he declared during a tour of the former Yugoslavia in 1993.
He was placed in a medically induced coma after being diagnosed with COVID-19 and suffering sepsis and respiratory failure in February 2022. His death was announced on April 6 of the same year.
A monument in his honour was unveiled at Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery on April 6, 2023.
Ksenia Sobchak
Party: Civic Initiative
A TV anchor, activist and journalist, the now 42-year-old Sobchak said she discussed her plans to run for the presidency personally with Vladimir Putin.
She is the daughter of former Saint Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, also one of Vladimir Putin's former teachers, and Russian politician Lyudmila Narusova.
After her election loss she remained in Russia, but has since said opposing the current government is futile.
In 2023 she told the New York Times: “There is no resistance, nor can there be any. This has to be understood.”
Maxim Suraykin
Party: Communists of Russia
Suraykin said during his 2018 campaign that he expected to take at least second place. He scored 0.68 per cent of the vote, putting him in seventh place.
In 2022 he was ousted from the Communists of Russia party for alleged connections to "unfriendly countries" and accusations of fraud.
Boris Titov
Party: Party of Growth
Titov has been the presidential commissioner for entrepreneurs' rights since 2012 and has led Party of Growth since 2016.
As of 2023 he was the head of the Russian delegation to the Cuban-Russian Business Committee. He was among the list of Russian individuals sanctioned by the UK in February of the same year.
Grigory Yavlinsky
Party: Yabloko
Yavlinsky, a Russian economist, has run in three presidential elections so far — 2000, 2012 and 2018.
The party submitted a statement following the Ukraine invasion which said it considered Russia's actions "a grave crime" and expressed "categorical protest".
"We believe that this war is contrary to Russia's national interests and destroys the future of Russia," the statement said.
Yavlinsky was considered a likely presidential candidate, but he declined to participate in December 2023.
And here's who's out of the race so far
Alexei Navalny
The Vladimir Putin foe is serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism.
The politician has been behind bars since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin.
Before his arrest, he campaigned against official corruption, organised major anti-Kremlin protests and ran for public office.
He has since received three prison sentences, rejecting all the charges against him as politically motivated.
Boris Nadezhdin
Party: Civic Initiative
Nadezhdin, an opposition politician, was considered an ally of murdered Putin critic Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in Moscow in 2015.
In a 2023 TV interview he suggested Putin needed to be ousted from office.
Sergey Malinkovich
Party: Communists of Russia
According to Russian state news agency TASS, the election commission found 14.9 per cent of Malinkovich's voter signatures were invalid.
He had promised victory in the war against Ukraine.
He said he had no plans to contest the decision.
"Not because we think that they are right on all counts, but because we do not want to cause an upheaval amid the special military operation," he told TASS.
Yekaterina Duntsova
Party: Independent
The former TV journalist lost her appeal to run in the presidential election after officials barred her.
Ms Duntsova had promoted a vision of a "humane" Russia "that's peaceful, friendly and ready to cooperate with everyone on the principle of respect".
The election commission refused to accept Ms Duntsova's initial nomination by a group of supporters, citing errors in the paperwork, including spelling.
Russia's Supreme Court rejected her appeal against the commission's decision.
After losing her appeal, Ms Duntsova said she would start working on the creation of her own political party which would stand for "peace, freedom and democracy".
"We will win the right to live without fear, speak freely and feel confident about the future," she said on Telegram.