Russian President Vladimir Putin will run for office again in 2024, according to state media reports on Friday.
Mr Putin – whose power has been questioned like never before over the costly war in Ukraine will be widely expected to win and secure another six years in the Kremlin, taking him to 2030.
Recent constitutional changes paved the way for the 71-year-old to potentially run again in 2030, opening up the possibility of staying in power up until 2036.
Mr Putin is already the country’s longest-serving leader since Josef Stalin, beating even Leonid Brezhnev’s 18-year tenure.
He first became president in 1999.
Mr Putin did not run in 2008 because of term limits but was appointed prime minister, a role in which he was still widely seen as effectively Russia’s leader. In 2012, he returned to the Kremlin.
He is expected to face only token opposition in the next election, scheduled to be held on 17 March.
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Putin still commands wide support after nearly a quarter-century in power, despite starting war in Ukraine that has taken thousands of his countrymen’s lives, provoked repeated attacks inside Russia -– including one on the Kremlin itself -– and corroded its aura of invincibility.
A short-lived rebellion in June by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin raised widespread speculation that Putin could be losing his grip, but he emerged from it with no permanent scars, and Prigozhin’s death in a mysterious plane crash two months later reinforced the view that Putin was in absolute control.
About 80% of the populace approves of his performance, according to the independent pollster Levada Center. That support might come from the heart or it might reflect submission to a leader whose crackdown on any opposition has made even relatively mild criticism perilous.
Whether due to real or coerced support, Putin is expected to face only token opposition on the ballot.
He could theoretically stay in power until he’s in his mid-80s. He already is the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
In 2008, he stepped aside to become prime minister due to term limits but remained Russia’s driving force.
Presidential terms were then extended to six years from four, while another package of amendments he pushed through three years ago reset the count for two consecutive terms to begin in 2024.
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“He is afraid to give up power,” Dmitry Oreshkin, a political analyst and professor at Free University of Riga, Latvia, told The Associated Press this year.
At the time of the amendments that allowed him two more terms, Putin’s concern about losing power may have been elevated: Levada polling showed his approval rating significantly lower, hovering around 60%.
In the view of some analysts, that dip in popularity could have been a main driver of the war that Putin launched in Ukraine in February 2022.
Brookings Institution scholar Fiona Hill, a former U.S. National Security Council expert on Russian affairs, agrees that Putin thought “a lovely small, victorious war” would consolidate support for his reelection.
“Ukraine would capitulate,” she told AP this year. “He’d install a new president in Ukraine. He would declare himself the president of a new union of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia over the course of the time leading up to the 2024 election. He’d be the supreme leader.”
The war didn’t turn out that way. It devolved into a grueling slog in which neither side makes significant headway and posed severe challenges to the rising prosperity integral to Putin’s popularity and Russians’ propensity to set aside concerns about corrupt politics and shrinking tolerance of dissent.
Philip Short, author of the 2022 book “Putin,” believes the Russian leader had wanted to put in place a political transition before 2024 “so that he didn’t have to stand again,” but that his struggles in Ukraine have forced him to stay on.
Putin’s rule has spanned five U.S. presidencies, from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden. He became acting president on New Year’s Eve in 1999, when Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. He was elected to his first term in March 2000.
When he was forced to step down in 2008 by term limits, he shifted to the prime minister’s post while close ally Dmitry Medvedev served as a placeholder president.
When Putin announced he would run for a new term in 2012 and Medvedev submissively agreed to become prime minister, public protests brought out crowds of 100,000 or more.
By Agencies
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