Vladimir Putin declares himself a candidate for the Russian presidential election in March 2024

He is running for re-election. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on Friday, December 8, that he would like to run in the country’s next presidential election, scheduled for March 17, 2024. The 71-year-old autocrat plans to extend his stay at the helm. of the Russian executive, where it has remained for almost a quarter of a century.

The presidential election must be held after the second anniversary of the start of the Russian offensive in Ukraine, launched in February 2022 and which provoked unprecedented sanctions against Russia. These elections “will be a sort of culmination of reunification“from the Ukrainian regions of Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia, whose annexation Russia claimsdeclared the President of the Federation Council.

Theoretical mandates until 2036

Faced with the two-term limit imposed by the country’s Constitution, the Russian president took the post of Prime Minister in 2008 and left the Kremlin to its last head of government, Dmitri Medvedev. After this four-year interlude, he was re-elected president in 2012.

Vladimir Putin should, in theory, have stepped down at the end of his current term in 2024, as Russian law does not allow a president to serve more than two consecutive terms. But thanks to a text that he promulgated in April 2021, “this restriction does not apply to those who held the position of head of state before the entry into force of the amendments to the Constitution.” He can therefore claim to remain in power for two additional terms, until 2036.