This is about that. If you are running for President of the Russian Federation and have not been nominated by United Russia, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, or A Just Russia, then: you need to collect 2 million signatures in one month with an allowable rejection rate of 5%. A competent signature collector can gather no more than 20 signatures per day (proven by experience). In the last presidential election, collectors were paid an average of one dollar per signature at the beginning of the collection period and around two closer to the end. You need to collect at least 2.5 million signatures so that, after checking them, you can throw out a third and keep only the best ones. You also have to remember that verification and binding the signature sheets takes a significant amount of time. On top of that, the details of every collector must be notarized. So we get the following: We have 20 days to collect signatures. We need to collect 125,000 signatures per day. That means at least 6,250 collectors working every day, and each of them has to go through a notary at the start of the process. At least another 500 people have to handle administration, verification, and so on. The collection has to happen during the New Year holidays, which makes the process harder (though some claim it actually helps—everyone is sitting at home, even if drunk). You definitely will not find collectors now who are willing to work for less than two dollars per signature. People willing to collect signatures for free are a separate issue. They all do a terrible job; their signatures are bad. Usually they bring in some pathetic little sheet with 8 signatures from their relatives and then start making a scene when they find out those signatures are headed for the trash because the collector was not notarized. In practice, everyone willing to work for free ends up costing far more than regular collectors. So the collection effort costs: $5 million for the signatures themselves, at least $1 million for administration, and $500,000 for other expenses. In other words, $6.5 million. The question is: is there any opposition politician in the country capable of pulling all this off, especially under administrative pressure? My answer is no. There are possible scenarios like Khakamada's in the last election, when she simply fabricated all the signatures. And even the fabricated signatures were not enough. But she was registered anyway, because H.'s participation made the election look more legitimate. So my prediction is this: Nemtsov and Bukovsky will not even make it to the signature-collection stage. Mikh Mikh will collect some number of them. He'll spend a pile of money, but they still won't register him.