Russia just disqualified Putin’s only serious electoral opponent

News Snapshot:

Putin must be sweating bullets. On Feb. 8, Russia’s Central Election Committee (CEC) disqualified Boris Nadezhdin, the only real threat to Vladimir Putin’s hold on power, from running for president of the Russian Federation. The CEC claimed that over 5 percent of the 100,000 signatures Nadezhdin needed to be a candidate were invalid. That same day, the CEC announced that three individuals would be running against Putin: Nikolai Kharitonov of the antediluvian Communist Party; Leonid Slutsky of the far-right Liberal-Democratic Party; and Vladislav Davankov of New People, a loyal semi-oppositionist party. All three are Putinites, with the first two being...