Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has started campaigning to run against President Vladimir Putin in elections next year.

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Putin’s 41-year-old rival is touring Russia, opening campaign offices and bidding for the 300,000 signatures needed to stand in the elections, while the current President has not yet confirmed his candidacy for the March 2018 vote.

Navalny has engaged a new generation in politics with anti-corruption videos skewering the country's most powerful. Portrayed negatively on state television, he uses YouTube, Twitter and Instagram to talk directly to Russians.

The opposition leader is also a seasoned public speaker. In the city of Tver on the Volga River, 160 kilometres from Moscow, Navalny met several hundred supporters.

"We can win these elections," he told the crowd. "We can win because the majority are for us."

Navalny has made inequality a central theme in his campaign. "Tens of millions of our fellow countrymen are destitute while the state is colossally rich," he asserted.

The Kremlin critic spoke with his right eye still half-closed. He is recovering after an assailant threw green dye in his face in April, the most recent in a string of physical attacks.

Navalny had medical treatment in Spain and now appears to have security. Two large men stood close to Navalny as he spoke, vowing that he will "say obvious banal things, but not be afraid and say them out loud".

Such attacks are not the only hurdle he has faced. Earlier this year Navalny was given a suspended sentence for corruption charges – potentially legally barring him from running. It followed a stream of court cases – one of which sent his brother to prison – that supporters say are part of a Kremlin agenda to cripple any campaign.

"We can only force them to register me," Navalny said, adamant that he will run regardless of what the authorities want. "It's clear as day Putin doesn't want to come out to debate with me."

In March his online video accusing Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of corruption brought thousands onto the streets in the biggest series of protests in years. The video was viewed more than 22 million times.

Although Navalny was among 1,000 people detained in Moscow thanks to a police crackdown on protests, further demonstrations are planned for Monday.

Teenagers and students from a younger generation that knows only Putin's rule are Navalny’s foremost supporters.

"I want to live in a free country, I want a free press and freedom of speech," says 20-year-old journalism student Ilya in Tver told AFP.

Since capturing public attention with his impassioned speeches protesting Putin's third term in power in 2012, Navalny has entrenched his position as Russia's most prominent opposition leader.

However, analysts say he has zero chance of defeating Putin.

Some liberals think his views are not as benign as they seem. Navalny has appeared at rallies with neo-Nazis in the past, and promised to curb immigration from mainly Muslim ex-Soviet Central Asia, calling "Islamism" the greatest threat to Russia.

"When we first met he was a moderate Russian nationalist," rights campaigner Olga Romanova, who has known Navalny for years, says to AFP. She likens him to France's Marine Le Pen. But Romanova says his views "have changed rather seriously" and Navalny has now become a "moderate conservative".

At the Moscow campaign office there is a youthful atmosphere and someone strums a ukelele at one point.

But the owners of the premises are trying to evict Navalny's team, tearing down the sign, replacing locks and cutting off electricity in a move many have blamed on the authorities.

Nevertheless, his supporters say they will continue their work.

"It's obvious they put pressure on the owner and said 'Get rid of them any way you can'," Moscow campaign chief Nikolai Lyaskin told AFP. "We aren't going to leave. We'll stay here all the time."

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

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