A politician bidding to run against Vladimir Putin in Russia’s upcoming presidential election described the decision to go to war in Ukraine as a “big mistake” in comments to the wives of soldiers on Thursday.

Boris Nadezhdin, representing a centre-right party called Civic Initiative that has no seats in parliament, is seeking to gather the necessary 100,000 signatures from people across Russia to enable him to stand against Putin.

Nadezhdin, 60, told the soldiers’ wives that the war, which the Kremlin calls a “special military operation”, was “a big mistake by Putin, of course, and the consequences will be very grave.”

Soon after Putin sent his army into Ukraine nearly two years ago, Russia passed laws introducing stiff prison terms for “discrediting” the armed forces or spreading deliberately false information about them.

“The huge amounts of money that have been spent and planned for the special military operation could have been invested in improving the quality of life of my fellow citizens.”

Putin made clear the central importance of the war to his re-election campaign when he announced his intention to run again last month at a meeting with soldiers and mothers of men killed in combat.

The original article contains 430 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 54%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!