At 71, the Russian leader will be a candidate again next March. Vladimir Putin has been in power since 1999. With the latest constitutional reform in 2020, he could stay until 2036. He; would then be 84 years old.
The true-false suspense did not last very long: Vladimir Putin indicated this Friday that he had not “other choice” than being a candidate for the Russian presidential election in March 2024, almost a quarter of a century after coming to power and two years after the start of the assault on Ukraine.
“I’m going to run for president,” Mr. Putin told a veteran of the conflict in Ukraine and on the sidelines of a ceremony at the Kremlin. “I understand that today there is no other choice”he said again according to images broadcast by the state television channel Rossiya-24.
“Our president has never shied away from his responsibilities and will never shirk his responsibilities. Today he proved it again”reacted on Telegram Valentina Matvienko, the president of the upper house of Parliament.
No critic of the Kremlin should be able to stand in the vote, while the authorities have for years repressed the opposition. This repression accelerated with the offensive in Ukraine.
At 71, the Russian leader has the right, thanks to a constitutional reform in 2020to run in 2024, then in 2030, making it theoretically possible to remain in power until 2036, when he is 84.
The vote will be held on March 17shortly after the second anniversary of the launch of the offensive in Ukraine, still ongoing, and on the eve of the tenth anniversary of Russia’s annexation, in 2014, of a first Ukrainian territory, the Crimean peninsula.
After a year 2022 marked by setbacks on the front and a volley of Western sanctions, Vladimir Putin appears at the end of 2023 in a better position with the failure of the counter-offensive launched this summer by Ukraine, the crumbling of European support and American in kyiv and the recovery of the national economy.
Almost all major opponentsfollowing the example of anti-corruption activist Alexeï Navalny, were thrown into prison or driven into exile and any criticism of the assault on Ukraine is severely repressed.
No competitors
The Russian Electoral Commission announced Friday that the vote will be held over three days, from March 15 to 17, a practice introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic, but denounced by the opposition as a means of facilitating fraud.
Vladimir Putin was president from 2000 to 2008 and has been again since 2012. Affected by the term limit, he ceded the Kremlin from 2008 to 2012 to an ally, Dmitri Medvedev, but remained as Prime Minister. strongman of Russia.
Born in 1952 in Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg), he first led a career as a KGB agent, soviet secret servicesnotably in East Germany, before returning to Russia after the breakup of the USSR.
He began his political career at the town hall of Saint Petersburg, before quickly joining the Kremlin and climbing the ranks, cultivating the image of a firm and efficient man, in the midst of the tumult of the 1990s in Russia.
Appointed Prime Minister, then succeeding Boris Yeltsin after his resignation on December 31, 1999, Vladimir Putin gradually brought the country into line, dismantling the democratic gains of the 1990s and advocating a power policy nostalgic for the USSR and increasingly conservative.
Ilaunched or supported four wars since coming to power : the second Chechen war (1999-2009), the invasion of Georgia (2008), the intervention in Syria (2015) and the attacks against Ukraine first in 2014 then in 2022.
His spokesperson, Dmitri Peskov, indicated in mid-November that Mr. Putin had no credible competitor.
The work of the media during this election will be complicated by a tightening of coverage conditions decided by the authorities in November. For example, independent journalists, bloggers and Russian media employees working from abroad should not have access to voting or counting.
The election will also take place in the Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine, where martial law is currently in force.
