Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Friday (December 8) that he will run for re-election in the 2024 presidential elections – a move likely to keep him in power until at least 2030. When will the elections take place?
When will the elections take place?
The elections will be held over three days starting from March 15-17, and the winning candidate will become the next president in May. The upper chamber of the Russian parliament voted to set the election date on Thursday (December 7), which is also considered the start of the election campaign. During this time, voting will also take place in what Russia refers to as its new territories – parts of Ukraine seized by Russian forces. Ukraine has stated that it will not stop until every Russian soldier is removed from its annexed territories.
How many voters will participate in the elections?
In Russia, about 110 million people are eligible to vote, although typically around 70-80 million actually participate. In 2018, the voter turnout was 67.5 percent.
What is the expected length of Putin’s rule if he is re-elected?
On the last day of 1999, Putin took over the presidency of Russia from Boris Yeltsin, and he has since become the longest-serving Russian president since Joseph Stalin, even surpassing Leonid Brezhnev, who was president from 1964 to 1982.
The integrity of the elections and Putin’s chances of winning?
With the Russian Duma considered a “rubber-stamp” body lacking influence and only serving as a voting mechanism for the government, many questions are raised about Putin’s chances of winning the elections and how fairly they will be conducted. Putin is viewed as a war criminal by the West, but this does not reflect in Russian opinion polls, where he has approval ratings of up to 80 percent, higher than his approval ratings before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Where is the opposition to Putin and who will run in the elections?
Putin is likely to face very little opposition or no real competition in the elections. In the 2018 vote, the person who came in second after Putin was the Communist businessman Pavel Grudinin. Grudinin managed to collect less than 9 million votes, or just 11.8 percent, according to official results. The most famous opposition politician in Russia is Alexei Navalny, who was poisoned earlier and is now in prison, so he cannot run for the presidential election.
In November, hardline Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who has been held in pre-trial detention for inciting extremism, expressed his readiness to run for the presidency despite stating that the elections would be “fake” since the winner has already been determined. When the elections occur, he will be behind bars.
The man who turned out to be the biggest direct threat to Putin’s unchallenged rule was the most powerful mercenary in Russia, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Prigozhin’s short-lived rebellion in June sent shockwaves through the Kremlin and shook Putin’s throne, leading the world to wonder if this was the end of his rule. However, two months later, Prigozhin was killed in a suspicious plane crash, and the remnants of his Wagner Group fell under the control of Russia’s allies.
(With
Input from news agencies)
Source of the article:
Prisha is a digital journalist at WION and mainly covers international politics. She loves diving into articles and exploring the cultures and histories of different places. She believes in purpose-driven journalism and books are her sanctuary.
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