Mikhail Khodorkovsky comments on the importance of political action in the 2018 Russian presidential elections. 

Open Russia’s executive director and a number of my other Open Russia colleagues have decided (on a purely personal basis) to take part in both Kseniya Sobchak and Alexey Navalny’s presidential election campaigns.

This corresponds with my personal position on the necessity to use political activity in order to promote the democratic agenda, as well as to train up local activists.  Nevertheless, as I have stated before, I do not consider these pseudo-elections to be legitimate.

After all, the Kremlin, through the use of administrative resources (as well as the security services), as unanimously determined the “winner”.

It’s for precisely this reason that I do not consider it necessary to actively participate financially or otherwise in promoting individual candidates.

I call for all of my supporters to vote for any candidate that suits them, and in the case that such a candidate is absent from the bulletin, simply write down the name of their desired candidate themselves.  I believe such an approach is more appropriate than a passive boycott.

Yes, we will contribute to raising the turnout (which is not that important, given the modern methods of fabricating the result), but with the current state of political apathy in society, any action is better than inaction!