ANNA LUTSKOVA7 hours ago
Vladimir Putin has given the first public indication that he will run for a new term in the 2018 elections.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich, we have a request – we all ask you to register as a candidate in the next presidential elections, we would all be very glad when it happens,”
said the villagers in the Siberian republic of Buryatia via a TV link, organized during the president’s visit to the eastern regions of Russia.
“All right, I will think about it, thank you,”
Putin replied.
Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting with volunteers of the Great Baikal Trail public organisation at the Baikal Reserve visitor center August 3, 2017. © Aleksey Nikolskyi / Sputnik
The next presidential elections in Russia are scheduled for early 2018. The exact date has not yet been announced.
According to Russian law, the election must be held on the second Sunday of the month of the previous election – which in this case would be March 11. However, in March this year the head of the upper house Committee for Constitutional Law, Senator Andrey Klishas, drafted a bill seeking to set the date of the 2018 polls as March 18, to coincide with the commemoration of Crimea’s reunification with Russia. The move was supported by the lower house speaker Vyacheslav Volodin.
So far these are the candidates for the next presidency in Russia:
- The founder of the liberal Yabloko party, Grigory Yavlinsky
- The head of the conservative/populist LDPR, Vladimir Zhirinovsky
- Anti-corruption activist Aleksey Navalny
- The largest opposition Communists party – not yet announced
- The parliamentary majority United Russia party – not yet announced
Stay tuned.