The upper house of the Russian parliament, the Federation Council, announced on Thursday that it has scheduled presidential elections in Russia for March 17, 2024. According to AP, this brings Vladimir Putin closer to a fifth presidential term, UNN reports.
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Members of the Russian Federation's Council of Federation unanimously voted to approve the decree setting the election date.
"In fact, this decision marks the beginning of the election campaign," said the speaker of the chamber, Valentina Matvienko.
Putin, 71, has not yet announced his intention to run again, the AP points out, but many expect him to do so soon, as the election day is set. Russia's Central Election Commission plans to hold a meeting on Friday to discuss the presidential campaign.
Asked whether Putin has decided to run for re-election, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov urged journalists to "be patient."
Under the constitutional reforms he orchestrated, Putin is eligible to run for two more six-year terms after his current one expires next year, potentially allowing him to remain in power until 2036, the newspaper notes.
"The tight control he has established over Russia's political system during his more than 20 years in power makes his re-election in March all but guaranteed. Prominent critics who could challenge him on the ballot are either in prison or living abroad, and most independent media outlets are banned," AP writes .
"Neither the costly and protracted war in Ukraine nor last summer's failed coup organized by mercenary chief Yevgeny Pryzhyn appears to have affected his high approval ratings reported in independent opinion polls," the newspaper notes.
Who will run against Putin next year, as indicated, remains unclear. In an online statement on Thursday, jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny urged his supporters to vote for anyone but Putin.
"Putin sees these elections as a referendum to approve his actions. A referendum to approve the war. Let's thwart his plans and make sure that no one on March 17 is interested in a rigged result, and that all of Russia sees and understands that the will of the majority is that Putin must go," the statement reads.
Members of Navalny's team said Thursday that they have placed several billboards in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities with the words "Russia" and "Happy New Year" with links and QR codes leading to their campaign website against the Russian president called "Russia without Putin." The Associated Press found that some of the billboards had already been removed.
Two people have reportedly announced plans to run: former deputy Boris Nadezhdin, who holds a seat on the Moscow region's municipal council, and Ekaterina Duntova, a journalist and lawyer from the Tver region north of Moscow who was once a member of the local legislature.
Allies of jailed Igor Strelkov, who has accused Putin of weakness and indecision in Ukraine, have also mentioned his ambition to run, but extremism charges against him by Russian authorities make his candidacy unlikely.
For Nadezhdin and Duntsova, as noted, getting on the ballot could prove to be a difficult task. Unless one of the five political parties with seats in the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, nominates them as its candidate, they will have to collect tens of thousands of signatures in many regions.
These requirements, the newspaper points out, can be applied to Putin, who has used different tactics over the years. In 2018, he ran as an independent candidate, and his campaign collected signatures. In 2012, he ran as a candidate of the Kremlin's United Russia party, so he did not have to collect signatures.
At least one party, A Just Russia, which has 27 seats in the 450-seat State Duma, is reportedly ready to nominate Putin as its candidate this year. It is noted that A Just Russia is going to nominate Putin at its congress on December 23, even if he decides to run as an independent candidate. It is not yet clear whether Yermel has agreed to these plans.
Putin will run as an independent candidate, according to independent political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin. "It would be too much of an honor for the party, he values himself highly. That's why I think he will run as an independent candidate and probably collect signatures. This will be a good reason to promote the campaign in the regions," he said.
Oreshkin, a professor at the Free University in Riga, Latvia, expects Putin and several other much less popular candidates, such as Nadezhdin or longtime Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, to be on the ballot.
Russia's Central Election Commission is said to be planning online voting in addition to traditional paper voting in about 30 Russian regions and is considering extending voting by three days, a practice that was approved during the pandemic and has been widely criticized by independent election observers.
These measures, in addition to the monitoring restrictions adopted in recent years, will severely limit the ability of independent observers, according to Stanislav Adniychuk, co-chair of Golos, a prominent independent election observation group.
Adniychuk told the Associated Press that only registered candidates or state-backed advisory bodies, such as public chambers, can appoint observers to polling stations, reducing the likelihood of truly independent observers. There is very little transparency in online voting, and if voting lasts for three days, it will be incredibly difficult to cover the country's nearly 100,000 polling stations, let alone ensure that ballots are not tampered with at night, he said.
"Regular observation (at polling stations) is the biggest problem now," Andriychuk said.
"But we will work anyway," he said of Voice's plans, adding that they will monitor throughout the campaign and support activists who get to the polls on Election Day.
Analyst Oreshkin said the vote would be more of a "ritual" than a competitive election process.
"This electoral ritual, the electoral rite, is of great importance for Putin and his team. It is important because it measures the loyalty of regional elites and (indicates) that the system is working," he said.