Mr. Putin officially runs for the 5th term as President of Russia

Tass news agency reported on January 29 that the Russian Central Election Commission (CEC) has officially approved Russian President Vladimir Putin as a self-nominated presidential candidate for the election on March 15-17.

“The decision was unanimously adopted,” CEC Chairwoman Ella Pamfilova announced.

Mr. Putin officially runs for the 5th term as President of Russia. (Photo: Tass)

CEC Secretary Natalya Budarina confirmed that, as required by law, out of 315,000 signatures in support of Mr Putin, 60,000 were randomly selected for verification.

“The verification results show that only 91 out of 60,000 signatures were declared invalid due to incorrect voter information. The 91 invalid signatures represent 0.15% of the verified signatures,” said Ms. Budarina.

The CEC secretary confirmed that there were no fake signatures, the number of authenticated and valid voter signatures was 314,909, “enough for candidates to register”.

Thus, Mr. Putin is the fourth presidential candidate registered by the CEC. Previously, the federal election agency registered candidates from three parliamentary parties: Mr. Leonid Slutsky of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), Mr. Vladislav Davankov of the New People's Party and Mr. Nikolay Kharitonov of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF).

The upcoming presidential election will be the fifth in Putin's political career. He was first elected President of Russia in 2000, and re-elected in 2004 and 2012. After serving as prime minister for four years from 2008 to 2012, Putin returned to the presidency in 2018.

In the 2018 election, Mr. Putin received 76.69% of the vote, which was also the best result after 4 presidential elections.

The Russian presidential election will take place from March 15 to 17, 2024. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said this year's election will have about 300 polling stations held abroad.

Russia held polling stations in 145 countries during the 2018 presidential election, when 444,000 Russian voters abroad exercised their citizenship.

Source