Russia heads to the polls with Vladimir Putin certain to win
RUSSIA goes to the polls this weekend as Vladimir Putin is certain to win another six year term as the nation’s president.
The 71-year-old has been in power since 2000 and faces no real opposition as he seeks to maintain his grip on the Kremlin.
Despite the outcome being a foregone conclusion, however, the eyes of the world will be on Russia, with the outcome likely to have ripple effects for Ukraine and beyond.
Here’s everything you need to know about the election.
The process
THE presidential election determines who will be the Russian head of state for the next six years.
To be eligible to stand, a candidate must be at least 35, have been resident in Russia for at least 25 years, and must not have a foreign citizenship or residence permit.
There are also various criminal convictions which bar prospective candidates from standing.
The late Alexei Navalny was barred from standing against Mr Putin in 2018 due to a conviction for fraud.
Due to the vast size of Russia, the world’s biggest country, the elections are held over three days. Polls opened at 8am local time in the Kamchatka Peninsula on the Pacific Ocean on Friday and will close at 8pm local time in Kaliningrad on Sunday.
The president is directly elected by popular vote. If a candidate receives over 50% of the vote in the first round they are duly elected, and if no candidate reaches that threshold a run-off election is held three weeks later.
Mr Putin is expected to win comfortably in the first round, and there has only been one run-off election since the collapse of the USSR.
In 1996, Boris Yeltsin required a second round to defeat the Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov, with allegations of American interference, violation of campaign laws and anticommunist media bias.
The candidates
THERE is no real doubt that Putin will be re-elected, and comfortably so.
The 71-year-old has been in power since 2000, although he spent four years as prime minister due to a two-term limit in the Russian constitution which has since been abolished.
Putin is technically running as an independent but has been endorsed by United Russia, the largest party in the Duma and the president’s former party.
The notional opposition in the Duma is the Communist Party, who are running 75-year-old Nikolay Kharitonov.
Kharitonov was not a popular choice for many within the communist movement and has said he will not criticise Putin.
Boris Nadezhdin of the centreright Civic Initiative party has been barred from standing after alleged irregularities in the 100,000 signatures needed to stand.
The ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia is running Leonid Slutsky following the death in 2022 of its founder Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
Opinion polling has Putin between 57% and 74% of the vote