Putin reset the clock on his term limits, changing Russia’s constitution during his current term to allow him to serve potentially two more stints.
Published March 14, 2024
Russia is holding a presidential election that is all but certain to extend Vladimir Putin’s rule throughout this decade and into the 2030s.
The vast majority of votes will be cast over three days from 15 March, though early and postal voting has already begun, including in occupied parts of Ukraine where Russian forces are attempting to exert authority.
But this is not a normal election; the poll is essentially a constitutional box-ticking exercise that carries no prospect of removing Putin from power.
The president’s dominance over the Russian electoral system has already been reinforced as the election looms. The country’s only anti-war candidate has been barred from standing, and Alexey Navalny, the poisoned and jailed former opposition leader who was the most prominent anti-Putin voice in Russia, died last month.
Here’s what you need to know about the election.
When and where is the election taking place?
Voting will be held from Friday March 15 until Sunday March 17, the first Russian presidential election to take place over three days; early voting was underway earlier, including among Russia’s ex-pat population around the world.
Voting has also been organized in the four Ukrainian regions Russia said it would annex in September 2022, in violation of international law. Russia has already held regional votes and referenda in those occupied territories, an effort dismissed by the international community as a sham but which the Kremlin sees as central to its campaign of Russification.
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SOURCE: www.amp.cnn.com
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WATCH VIDEO
RELATED: Putin warns the West: Russia is ready for nuclear war
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech at the Future Technologies Forum in Moscow, Russia, 14 February 2024. Photo: Reuters
Published March 13, 2024
President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Wednesday Russia was technically ready for nuclear war and that if the US sent troops to Ukraine, it would be considered a significant escalation of the conflict.
Putin, speaking just days before a 15-17 March election which is certain to give him another six years in power, said the nuclear war scenario was not “rushing” up and he saw no need for the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
“From a military-technical point of view, we are, of course, ready,” Putin, 71, told Rossiya-1 television and news agency RIA in response to a question whether the country was really ready for a nuclear war.
Putin said the US understood that if it deployed American troops on Russian territory – or to Ukraine – Russia would treat the move as an intervention.
“(In the US) there are enough specialists in the field of Russian-American relations and in the field of strategic restraint,” said Putin, the ultimate decision maker in the world’s biggest nuclear power.
“Therefore, I don’t think that here everything is rushing to it (nuclear confrontation), but we are ready for this.”
