The registration of candidates for the Russian presidential elections in March has ended, the TASS agency announced on Sunday, with President Vladimir Putin on the list, who is expected to win, and three other politicians who all support Moscow’s war in Ukraine, Reuters informs
The CEC (Central Electoral Bureau of the Russian Federation) registered Vladislav Davankov, vice-president of the State Duma (the lower house of the parliament) and member of the New People parliamentary group, Leonid Slutski, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), ultra-nationalist and loyal to the Kremlin , and the candidate of the Communist Party, Nikolai Kharitonov.
The list does not include Russian anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin, after the Central Election Commission (CEC) barred him from running on Thursday, saying it had found irregularities in the collection of signatures needed to support his candidacy.
Putin, 71 years old, who chose to run as an independent rather than from the ruling United Russia party, has been Russia’s authoritarian leader since 2000 and controls all the levers of state, so he is expected to win the vote easily from next month.
Although no one expected the 60-year-old Nadezhdin – who has characterized Putin’s war in Ukraine as a “fatal mistake” – to win, his sharp criticism surprised some analysts. The Kremlin has said it does not see him as a serious rival to Putin.
Nadejdin said on Thursday that he will appeal the decision of the CEC to the Supreme Court of Russia. The war, which the Kremlin calls a “special military operation”, is nearing the end of its second year and has killed thousands on both sides, displaced millions of Ukrainians and transformed dozens of towns and villages in ruins
