© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a gathering with members of the Safety Council by way of video hyperlink on the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia February 9, 2024. Sputnik/Sergei Ilyin/Pool by way of REUTERS/File Photograph
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(Reuters) – Russia’s registration of candidates for the March presidential election has closed, TASS reported on Sunday, with an inventory together with President Vladimir Putin, who is anticipated to win, and three politicians who all assist Moscow’s warfare in Ukraine.
The record didn’t embody the Russian anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin after the Central Election Fee (CEC) barred him on Thursday from working, saying it had discovered flawsin the gathering of signatures required for the assist of his candidacy.
The CEC registered Vladislav Davankov, deputy chair of the Russian Duma and a member of the New Folks caucus; Leonid Slutsky, the chief of the Kremlin-loyal ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Get together (LDPR); and the Communist Get together nominee, Nikolai Kharitonov.
Putin, 71, who has chosen to run as an unbiased relatively than because the candidate of the ruling United Russia social gathering and who has been Russia’s paramount chief since 2000 and controls all of the state’s levers, is anticipated to simply win subsequent month’s vote.
Whereas no person has anticipated the 60-year-old Nadezhdin – who has characterised Putin’s warfare in Ukraine as a “fatal mistake” – to win, his trenchant criticism has shocked some analysts. The Kremlin has stated it doesn’t see him as a critical rival to Putin.
Nadezhdin stated on Thursday he would problem the CEC’s choice in Russia’s Supreme Courtroom.
The warfare, which the Kremlin calls a “special military operation”, is nearing the tip of its second 12 months. It has killed hundreds on either side, displaced thousands and thousands of Ukrainians, and turned scores of cities and villages into rubble.