©Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council via video link at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, February 9, 2024. Sputnik/Sergei Ilyin/Pool via REUTERS/file Photo
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(Reuters) – Registration of Russian candidates for March’s presidential election has concluded, TASS reported on Sunday, with a list including President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to win, and three politicians who all support Moscow’s war on Ukraine.
Russian anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin is not on the list, after the Central Election Commission (CEC) barred him from running on Thursday, saying it had found flaws in the collection of signatures needed to support his candidacy.
The CEC registered Vladislav Davankov, deputy speaker of the Russian Duma and member of the New People caucus; Leonid Slutsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), an ultranationalist loyal to the Kremlin; and the Communist Party candidate, Nikolai Kharitonov.
Putin, 71, who chose to run as an independent rather than as the candidate of the ruling United Russia party and who has been Russia’s supreme leader since 2000 and controls all the levers of state, is expected to easily win next month’s vote.
While no one expected the 60-year-old Nadezhdin – who called Putin’s war in Ukraine 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.
Nadezhdin said Thursday he would challenge the CEC’s decision in Russia’s Supreme Court.
The war, which the Kremlin calls a “special military operation”, is nearing the end of its second year. It killed thousands of people on both sides, displaced millions of Ukrainians and reduced dozens of towns and villages to rubble.