Vladimir Putin has said he will run for president in the March 2024 election, moving the longtime Russian leader a step closer to a fifth term in office.
The announcement on Friday was widely expected and there is little question about the outcome.
Putin has dominated Russia’s political system and the media for the past two decades, jailing prominent opposition politicians, such as Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin, who could challenge him on the ballot. Putin has won previous elections by a landslide, but independent election watchdogs say they were marred by widespread fraud.
Putin’s long-term spokesperson in a previous interview said: “Putin will be re-elected next year with more than 90% of the vote”.
Under constitutional reforms he orchestrated in 2020, Putin is eligible to seek two more six-year terms after his term expires next year, potentially allowing him to remain in power until 2036.
If he remains in power until then, his tenure will surpass even that of Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union for 29 years, making Putin the longest-serving Moscow leader since the Russian empire.
Putin, who was handed the presidency by Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has already served as the Russian leader for longer than any other ruler but Stalin, beating even Leonid Brezhnev’s 18-year tenure.
The election will be held on 17 March and the winner will be inaugurated in May.
The presidential election is the first since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with voting also taking place in what Russia calls its new territories – parts of Ukraine now controlled by Russian forces.
Putin announced his decision to run after awarding soldiers who had fought in Ukraine with Russia’s highest military honour.
“Times are such that I need to make a decision. I will run for office,” Putin said at the Kremlin after he was asked by a military officer about his position on the election.
Analysts said Putin’s decision to announce his candidacy in front of Russian soldiers points to his desire to link the war to his re-election campaign.
“The elections are meant to legitimise his decision to invade Ukraine,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, based in Moscow. “He wants to demonstrate that the majority of Russians support the war.”
Two other candidates so far have announced plans to run: the former lawmaker Boris Nadezhdin, who holds a seat on a municipal council in the Moscow region, and Yekaterina Duntsova, a journalist and lawyer from the Tver region north of Moscow, who once was a member of a local legislature.
The pro-war Russian nationalist and Putin critic Igor Girkin has also indicated he wants to run for president but is unlikely to be listed on the ballot given he is awaiting trial on extremism charges.
Other Kremlin-friendly candidates from the “systemic opposition” are also expected to run, under a Kremlin-orchestrated system often described as “managed democracy”.
Analysts and former Kremlin insiders say the presidential elections are also meant to signal to the elites that Putin is still firmly in control of the country despite the failed summer uprising of the Wagner head, Evgeniy Prigozhin, that inflicted the biggest crisis on the regime since Putin became president.
“For Putin, it is crucial to show the elites that he represents the people, that it is futile to go against him,” said Abbas Galyamov, a political consultant and former Putin speechwriter.
Speaking from prison this week, Navalny urged Russians to vote for anyone but Putin.
“For Putin, the 2024 elections are a referendum to approve his actions, to approve the war,” Navalny said in an online statement posted by his supporters. “Let’s disrupt his plans and make it happen so that no one on March 17 is interested in the rigged result, but that all of Russia saw and understood: the will of the majority is that Putin must leave.”
In a daring political statement, allies of Navalny in the Anti-Corruption Foundation on Thursday placed anti-Putin billboards disguised as New Year’s greetings across several major cities that said “Russia” and “Happy new year”. But a large QR code on the signs led to a website titled “Russia without Putin”.
