Russian President Vladimir Putin has told soldiers who had fought in the Ukraine war that he would run for president again in the 2024 election, a move that will allow the former KGB spy to stay in power until at least 2030.
Key points:
- Vladimir Putin said he will run for president again while honouring war veterans
- Mr Putin has ruled Russia longer than any since Josef Stalin
- Russia’s presidential election is in March, and is expected to be a formality for Mr Putin
After Mr Putin awarded veterans with Russia’s highest military honour, the Hero of Russia gold star, a lieutenant colonel named Artyom Zhoga asked the president to run again.
“I will not hide that I have had different thoughts at different times but it is now time to make a decision,” Mr Putin told Mr Zhoga and the other decorated soldiers on Friday.
“I will run for the post of president,” Mr Putin was shown in television footage saying in the gilded Georgievsky Hall, part of the Grand Kremlin Palace.
Mr Zhoga told reporters afterwards that he was very glad the president had assented to the request, adding that all of Russia would support the decision.
Reuters reported last month that he had decided to run.
For Mr Putin, 71, the election is a formality: with the support of the state, the state-run media and almost no mainstream public dissent, he is certain to win.
Opposition politicians cast the election as a fig leaf of democracy that adorns what they see as the corrupt dictatorship of Mr Putin’s Russia.
Mr Putin, who was handed the presidency by Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has already served as president for longer than any other ruler of Russia since Josef Stalin, beating even Leonid Brezhnev’s 18-year tenure.
Supporters of Mr Putin dismiss that analysis, pointing to some independent polling that shows he enjoys approval ratings of above 80 per cent.
Reuters