Irina Khakamada

2016, she became a member of the Council of the Political Growth Party. She took part in the elections to the State Duma of the 7th convocation as a candidate from the “Party of Growth”, in the first part of the regional list of Moscow. The Party won 1.28% of the vote and was unable to go to parliament.

Khakamada has appeared in several films and television series as an actress, including Brief Guide To A Happy Life in 2012.

2008, she left the party of her own accord, explaining the cessation of her political activities.

On June 11, 2006, Boris Berezovsky, fugitive from Russian justice system, said Boris Nemtsov received a word from Khakamada that Putin threatened her and like-minded colleagues in person. According to Berezovsky, Putin had issued threats that Khakamada and her colleagues "will take in the head immediately, literally, not figuratively" if they "open the mouth" about the Russian apartment bombings.

Former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko said he had learned from Anna Politkovskaya that Putin asked Khakamada to pass a threat to Politkovskaya. Khakamada denied her involvement in passing any specific threats, and said that she warned Politkovskaya only in general terms more than a year earlier, and that Politkovskaya blamed her and Mikhail Kasyanov for becoming Kremlin's puppets. Politkovskaya and Litvinenko were murdered in October and November 2006.

Khakamada was one of the leaders of the Union of Rightist Forces when she decided to run in the 2004 Russian presidential election. She was not supported by her party, which had decided that they would not nominate a candidate. She announced her candidacy in December 2003.

Since 2004, the chairman of the Party reorganized into the "Our Choice Interregional Public Fund for Social Solidarity", which in 2006 became part of the Russian People’s Democratic Union (RNDS) political party, led by Mikhail Kasyanov and her.

2002 she was a rapporteur from Russia at the 57th session of the UN General Assembly. 2005 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Khakamada was a member of the coordinating council of the Union of Right Forces. She opted to abstain from the council's vote on their endorsement in the 2000 presidential election, in which the party ultimately voted to support Vladimir Putin's campaign over that of council member Konstantin Titov.

Khakamada kicked-off her campaign by delivering a speech which placed the blame for the Moscow theater hostage crisis at Putin's feet. She entered the election with better name recognition than most of the other candidates challenging Putin. Her candidacy was officially registered on 8 February. Khakamada was only the second woman to be a registered candidate in a Russian presidential election, after only Ella Pamfilova in 2000.

In 1995, Time named her a 21st-century politician among 100 well-known women in the world.

She was a former member (deputy) of the lower house (the State Duma) of the Russian parliament for three convocations (electoral terms, 1993–2003) and Vice-Chair of the house; co-chair of a political party Union of Right Forces (1999–2003), presidential candidate of the Russian Federation (2004), member of the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights (2012–2018).

Irina Khakamada was an elected Duma representative from 1993 to 2003. She is regarded as a democratic politician who is in a moderate opposition to the Russian government. She is known for criticizing the governmental actions during Moscow theater hostage crisis where she was involved as one of the negotiators. Khakamada stated that the hostage takers were not going to use their bombs to kill the people and destroy the building.

She graduated from the Department of Economy of the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University in Moscow in 1978. Irina obtained her PhD degree from the Faculty of Economics of Lomonosov Moscow State University. In 1983, she received the academic title of associate professor in the specialty "political economy". She was a member of the CPSU from 1984 to 1989.

Irina Mutsuovna Khakamada (Russian: Ири́на Муцу́овна Хакама́да , IPA: [ɪˈrʲinə mʊˈtsuəvnə xəkɐˈmadə] ; Japanese: イリーナ・ハカマダ ; born April 13, 1955, in Moscow) is a Russian economist, political activist, journalist, publicist and politician who ran in the 2004 Russian presidential election.

Khakamada was born to a Japanese father, Mutsuo Hakamada, a communist who defected to the Soviet Union in 1939. Her mother- Nina Sinelnikova, with Russian and Armenian roots, was an English schoolteacher who lost her father to the Stalinist purges and her mother to suicide following the family's forced relocation to Khabarovsk.