2023-12-08 17:31:09
At 71 years old and without any major surprises, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced this Friday, on the sidelines of an official ceremony in the Kremlin, that he is a candidate for a fifth term in the March 2024 presidential elections, according to the three main Russian news agencies. .
Published on: 08/12/2023 – 16:31
3 min
“At other times, I had another position on this issue. But I understand that today there is no other possible choice. Therefore, I will run for the post of President of Russia”said Vladimir Putin when announcing his candidacy for a fifth term, on the occasion of an awards ceremony at the Kremlin Palace in Moscow.
Reacting to this announcement, the president of the lower house of Parliament, Viatcheslav Volodine, praised on the Telegram network the “unique qualities” of Vladimir Putin, while his counterpart in the upper house, Valentina Matvienko, considered that the head of state “You will never run away from your responsibilities.”
In a political context in which his re-election offers little room for doubt given the strong repression exercised against the opposition in his country, the head of state has in his favor a constitutional revision dating from 2020 that gives him the possibility of being a candidate for his own succession until 2036, that is, until he is 84 years old.
After a year of 2022 marked by military setbacks in Ukraine, Western sanctions and economic difficulties, Vladimir Putin currently appears to benefit from a more favorable context, with the failure of the Ukrainian counter-offensive, the decrease in Western support for Kiev and on the other hand , improvements in your country’s economic performance in 2023.
The presidential elections will take place from March 15 to 17, 2024, just after the second anniversary of the start of the Russian offensive against Ukraine. The modalities for organizing the vote over three days have been denounced by the opposition, which sees them as a way of facilitating electoral fraud.
Coming to power in Russia in 1999, at the end of the Yeltsin era, first as head of the government and, a few months later in 2000, as President, this former KGB cadre, completely unknown to the general public, became an unavoidable figure in the international political microcosm. in the space of a quarter of a century.
President of Russia between 2000 and 2008, Vladimir Putin provisionally ceded the reins of power to his ally Dmitri Medvedev between 2008 and 2012 to conform to the Constitution of the time, however continuing to be the country’s strongman, in the position of Prime Minister .
Vladimir Putin was elected President again in 2012, a position he still holds today.
Under his watch, Russia went from the chaos following the fall of the Berlin Wall to an economy that relies essentially on income generated by hydrocarbons. In political terms, Putin’s regime has increasingly seen itself as a counterpoint to Western power.
Since Putin came to power in Russia, that country has been involved in four conflicts: the Second Chechen War (1999-2009), the invasion of part of Georgia (2008), the intervention in Syria (2015) and the attacks against Ukraine, first in 2014 and then in 2022, not to mention the interventions of the Wagner group in various areas of war on the African continent.
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