(Moscow) Vladimir Putin has announced that he is a candidate for a fifth term in the presidential elections on March 17 in Russia, his re-election leaving little doubt after almost a quarter of a century in power and the repression of the opposition.
The Russian head of state, whom a 2020 constitutional revision authorizes to be a candidate again in 2024 and 2030, can theoretically remain in the Kremlin until 2036, the year he turns 84.
“At another time I had other thoughts regarding this question. But I understand that today there is no other choice. So I will run for the post of President of Russia,” declared the 71-year-old.
Mr. Putin was speaking in the Kremlin during an exchange with uniformed fighters, the mother of a soldier killed in Ukraine, a doctor and a mine worker to whom he had just presented decorations, during a televised ceremony.
PHOTO SERGEI GUNEEV, SPUTNIK VIA REUTERS
Vladimir Putin presents a medal to a soldier during a ceremony at the Kremlin on December 8 in Moscow.
Unusually, the announcement was made to Russian media a few minutes earlier by a participant in the meeting, Artiom Joga, a fighter and member of the local Russian parliament in Donetsk, an occupied city in eastern Ukraine.
“The candidacy is loaded with symbols: heroes, “fathers of Donbass” [un territoire ukrainien revendiqué par Moscou, NDLR] want to see Putin president again…. Putin chose war, war chooses Putin,” analyst Tatiana Stanovaïa wrote on Telegram.
“It is not so much about prospering as it is about surviving,” she added, believing that this announcement, intended to be informal, aimed to give the image of a “modest Putin, occupied by [le règlement] real questions.”
Favorable posture
The speaker of the lower house of Parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, reacted on Telegram by emphasizing the “unique qualities” of Vladimir Putin, while for his counterpart in the upper house, Valentina Matvienko, the head of state “will not flee never its responsibilities”.
No Kremlin critic should be able to stand in the vote, as the authorities have been crushing the opposition for years. This repression accelerated with the offensive in Ukraine.
The election will take place March 15-17, shortly after the second anniversary of the outbreak of the ongoing attack on Ukraine and on the eve of the tenth anniversary of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine. a first Ukrainian territory, the Crimean peninsula.
The election will also take place in the Ukrainian regions occupied by Russia, where martial law is currently in force.
After a year 2022 marked by setbacks on the fighting front and a volley of Western sanctions, Vladimir Putin appears at the end of 2023 in a better position with the failure of the counter-offensive started this summer by Ukraine, the crumbling of support European and American in Kyiv and the recovery of the national economy.
PHOTO GAVRIIL GRIGOROV, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Vladimir Poutine
Almost all major opponents, such as anti-corruption activist Alexeï Navalny, have been thrown in prison or driven into exile.
No competitors
The Russian Electoral Commission announced Friday that the vote would take place over three days, a practice introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic but denounced by the opposition as being a means of facilitating fraud and obtaining the results expected by those in power. .
Mr. Putin was president from 2000 to 2008 and has been again since 2012. Affected by the term limit, he ceded the Kremlin from 2008 to 2012 to an ally, Dmitry Medvedev, but remained as president. prime minister the strongman of Russia.
Born in 1952 in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), he first had a career as an agent for the KGB, the Soviet secret services, notably in East Germany, before returning to Russia at the dislocation of the USSR.
He began his political career at the town hall of Saint Petersburg, before quickly joining the Kremlin and climbing the ranks, cultivating the image of an efficient man, in the midst of the tumult of the 1990s in Russia.
Appointed prime minister, then succeeding Boris Yeltsin after his resignation on December 31, 1999, Vladimir Putin gradually restored the economy thanks to the hydrocarbon windfall and brought his country into line, dismantling the democratic gains of the 1990s and advocating a policy nostalgic power of the USSR, increasingly conservative and anti-Western.
PHOTO ARCHIVES AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Russian President Boris Yeltsin speaks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin, December 31, 1999 in Moscow.
He has fought or supported four wars since coming to power: the second Chechen war (1999-2009), the invasion of part of Georgia (2008), the intervention in Syria (2015) and attacks against Ukraine, first in 2014, then in 2022.