Victor Ezeja
AdminRussian lawmakers “practically kicks off the presidential campaign” on Thursday when they set the date of the country’s 2024 presidential election for the 17th of March.
Members of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, voted unanimously to approve a decree setting the date, moving Vladimir Putin a step closer to a fifth term in office.
Putin, 71, is yet to announce his intention to run again, but is widely expected to do so in the coming days now that the date has been set. The former KGB agent can remain in power until 2036 based on the constitutional reforms he orchestrated in 2020 as he is eligible to seek two more six-year terms after his current one expires next year.
After his first two presidential terms, Putin briefly became prime minister between 2008 and 2012 while his protege Dmitry Medvedev became president. The switch was to get around a constitutional ban on more than two consecutive presidential terms.
With his stranglehold over Russia’s political system, Putin’s victory in the March election is all but assured. Prominent critics who could challenge him at the polls are either in jail or living abroad, and most independent media have been banned.
Neither the costly, drawn-out war in Ukraine, nor a failed rebellion last summer by mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin appear to have affected the Kremlin chief’s high approval ratings reported by independent pollsters.
With imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny urged his supporters in an online statement Thursday to vote for anyone but Putin, two people have so far announced their intentions to be on the ballot.
They are 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.
And in a meeting broadcast live on State television, the Russian upper house of parliament unanimously approved the date of the vote.
“In essence, this decision marks the start of the election campaign,” speaker of the Federation Council, Valentina Matviyenko said. Russia’s central election commission is to hold a meeting on the presidential campaign on Friday.
“Despite the difficult external circumstances and the attempts by the enemy to weaken Russia, we remain true to our main constitutional values,” Matvienko said.
She added that Russians were “united like never before” around Putin’s government “and the task of the state is to show it is worthy of this trust and to prevent any provocations”.
Since launching the campaign in Ukraine, Putin has become a pariah among Western leaders and his country has been hit by unprecedented sanctions. He has however become increasingly confident in recent weeks as Western support for Ukraine has frayed and Ukraine’s counter-offensive has largely failed to pierce Russian lines.
The Russian economy has also proved resilient against sanctions and is growing again as Russia re-orients its energy exports to Asian clients.
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