Boris Nadezhdin told the wives of Russia’s mobilized soldiers the war was “a big mistake by Putin, of course, and the consequences will be very grave.”

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.”