Russian President Putin announces reelection bid

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday declared his intention to seek re-election next March, a vote he appears certain to win.

If Putin serves another sixyear term that would run through 2024, it would make him the nation’s longest serving ruler since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

The president chose to make the long-expected announcement at the GAZ automobile factory in Nizhny Novgorod, where he found an enthusiastic audience in the workers.

“I couldn’t find a better place and moment for that,” he said, to massive applause. “Thank you for your support, I will run for president.”

Putin has been in power in Russia since 2000. He served two presidential terms in 2000-2008, then shifted into the prime minister’s seat because of term limits, but continued calling the shots while his ally, Dmitry Medvedev, served as placeholder president. Medvedev had the presidential term extended to six years and then stepped down to let Putin reclaim the presidency in 2012. The delay in announcing his bid was seen as part of the Kremlin’s political maneuvering. SEOUL: A B-1B bomber on Wednesday joined large-scale Us-south Korean military exercises that North Korea has denounced as pushing the peninsula to the brink of nuclear war, as tension mounts between the North and the United States.

The bomber flew from the Pacific U.s.-administered territory of Guam and joined U.S. F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters in the annual exercises, which run until Friday.

The drills come a week after North Korea said it had tested its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States, as part of a weapons programme that it has conducted in defiance of international sanctions and condemnation.

Asked about the bomber’s flight, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in Beijing: “We hope relevant parties can maintain restraint and not do anything to add tensions on the Korean peninsula.” North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea, the United States and Japan. Its official KCNA state news agency said at the weekend that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration was “begging for nuclear war” by staging the drills.