Vladimir Putin aims to mark 30 years at the helm of Russia by running unchallenged in an election

With the opposition behind bars or in exile, and with the rest of the parties – allowed by the Kremlin – waiting for the Russian president to take the step, Vladimir Putin has confirmed something that everyone already knew: he will run for a fifth term in the three-day presidential elections that will end on March 17, 2024. In the event that Putin wins the election — a given given of his iron grip on the state apparatus and the absence of rivals — and completes the six-year term, until 2030, he would equal Stalin's three-decade hold of the Kremlin.

Despite the importance of his candidacy, it was not the Russian leader who made the announcement public, but Artyom Zhoga, current speaker of the self-proclaimed parliament of the separatist Donetsk Republic and father of a head of the pro-Russian Sparta battalion killed in the war against Ukraine last year. The leader confirmed the news to reporters after a closed-door meeting of the separatists with Putin.

"We asked him to participate in the presidential elections, to which he replied that these are different, difficult times, but that at this time he will be with the people and stand for election," Zhoga said.

Putin has no rivals, literally speaking. The Russian president would obtain 70% of the votes, according to a poll published by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), a percentage that the Levada institute placed at 58% in a poll published last Thursday. The next challenger is the leader of the Communist Party of Russia since 1993, 79-year-old Gennady Zyuganov, but his party has not confirmed a candidacy. The politician from this party loyal to the Kremlin would barely get 1.3% of the vote, the Levada study predicts.

According to two Kremlin sources quoted by the online newspaper Meduza, a "political strategist" of Putin, Sergei Kiriyenko, has established that Putin's rivals cannot be under 50 years of age or enjoy great popularity. The media, banned by the Russian authorities, points out that the presidential administration wants to prevent citizens from thinking that the president "is no longer the same person who came to power with a firm hand."

Putin's popularity ratings remain high despite the stalemate in the war against Ukraine. According to polls by the independent Levada institute, 85% of Russians approved of his performance in November. His support increased thanks to the invasion of the neighbouring country in February 2022: since 2018, the year of the World Cup held in Russia, his popularity was in decline and was around 65% at the end of 2021.

"Similar levels of support for the current president were observed after 2014 – the year of the illegal annexation of Crimea, which sparked a wave of euphoria in the country – and in the mid-2000s – with the economic and social stability achieved by Putin after the turbulent 2024s," Levada notes. "Most Russians would like to see Vladimir Putin as president after <>," the institute concludes.

Putin's candidacy was confirmed a day after the Federation Council, Russia's upper house, set March 17 as the final date for presidential elections. These will take place for the first time over three days, since the 15th, due to the introduction of internet voting, a system devised by the Kremlin that has been denounced by both dissidents and some members of the ruling parties. Among them, the former head of the Moscow section of the Communist Party of Russia, Valeri Rashkin, who led protests in the capital against alleged electoral fraud in the September 2021 legislative elections. Rashkin was arrested a month later on charges of illegal hunting.

Competitors Cancelled

Two of Putin's potential competitors within the ultranationalist sector have been nullified. The head of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, died at the end of August in an air disaster that the Russian leader himself attributed — without the results of the investigation having been made public — to an alleged mixture of drugs and grenades on the plane just two months after the mercenary chief challenged him with a failed rebellion over the management of the war in Ukraine. Thanks to his angry criticism, Putin's nicknameHef had gained great popularity in Russia. And another critic, one of the Russian military officers who instigated the separatist movement in Ukraine's Donbas region in 2014, former commander Igor Ghirkin Strelkov, is in prison for discrediting the high command and fears he will be killed. "What I fear most is that, instead of imposing the usual criminal punishment on me, they will amnestize me like the cook," he denounced ironically this week.

As for the democratic opposition, only the anti-war Yabloko party resists within the system, although it has no presence in parliament. Its founder, Grigory Yavlinsky, does not rule out running as the candidate of a party he no longer leads if he gathers 10 million signatures. "It is urgent that Russia and Ukraine dialogue to end the slaughter," the longtime politician told this newspaper in a recent interview.

For its part, the movement of imprisoned dissident Alexei Navalny has appealed to Russians to vote for any alternative other than Putin, despite considering the elections "a travesty of the electoral procedure" and that their results "will be, as usual, falsified".

Navalny's organization, declared extremist by the Kremlin, managed to hang posters in several Russian cities on Thursday reading "Russia without Putin". Their leader was supported by just 9% of the population at the beginning of the year, according to Levada. Locked in a prison in strict solitary confinement, his lawyers complain that the authorities are preventing them from visiting the activist, and he has failed to appear at two videoconference hearings scheduled this week without any official explanation.

Fifth presidential term

Putin will run next year for what will be his fifth presidential term. A former KGB agent, his dizzying career to power began after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, when he began working as an adviser to the then mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak. This catapulted him into the circles of President Boris Yeltsin, who appointed him head of the Federal Security Service — the old KGB — in 1998 and prime minister in 1999. Thanks to Yeltsin's surprise resignation, Putin assumed the presidency on an interim basis on December 31, 1999, and endorsed the office at the polls in 2000.

The Russian leader is on track to mark a quarter of a century at the helm of the country. The constitution prevented him from repeating his term in the legislature from 2008 to 2012, when he served in the role of prime minister while one of his eternal successors, Dmitry Medvedev, assumed the presidency. In 2024, however, it will be different: the Kremlin thoroughly amended the Basic Law after a referendum held in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, and cleaned up Putin's record of mandates. In theory, under current law, he can preside over the country for two more six-year terms, until 2036.

The Kremlin's goal is to convince Russians on the campaign trail that there is no alternative to Putin but chaos. "Taking into account the current situation, the dramatic time that our country is going through, this decision is absolutely logical and correct. His work as president must continue," Medvedev said after his mentor's candidacy was confirmed.

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