MOSCOW.– The National Electoral Commission of Russia registered on Friday the first two candidates who will face the president, Vladimir Putin, in the March elections in which the president is the clear favorite.
The commission approved the inclusion of Leonid Slutsky, of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, and Vladislav Davankov, of the New People’s Party, on the ballot for the elections to be held between March 15 and 17.
Neither poses a major threat to Putin, who has dominated Russian politics since becoming president in 2000. In parliament, the two candidates’ parties largely back legislation introduced by United Russia, the president’s party.
Slutsky, as head of the foreign affairs committee of parliament’s lower house, the Duma, has been a prominent defender of the Kremlin’s increasingly anti-Western foreign policy. In the last presidential elections of 2018, his party obtained less than 6% of the votes.
Davankov is the vice president of the Duma and his party, born in 2020, has 15 of the 450 seats in the chamber.
The Communist Party has presented Nikolai Kharitonov as a candidate, but the electoral commission has not yet formally registered him. Kharitonov was already the party’s candidate in 2004, when he was the second most voted, although far behind Putin.
The candidacy of a Russian politician who advocates peace in Ukraine was rejected last month. The commission refused to accept Yekaterina Duntsova’s initial proposal, presented by a group of supporters, citing errors in documentation, including spelling. The Supreme Court later rejected Duntsova’s appeal of the ruling.
Putin presents himself as an independent, and his campaign, along with affiliates of the ruling United Russia and a political coalition called the Popular Front, have collected signatures to support his candidacy. Under Russian law, independent candidates must be nominated by at least 500 supporters and must gather at least 300,000 signatures in 40 or more regions.
Imprisoned opponent
Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is imprisoned in a penal colony above the Arctic Circle, his relatives said after passing without having had contact with him.
Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, is serving a 19-year prison sentence on charges of extremism. He had been imprisoned in the Vladimir region of central Russia, about 230 kilometers (140 miles) east of Moscow, but his lawyers say they could not contact him since December 6.
Navalny “is fine, at least as good as he can be after so much time” and a lawyer visited him, Yarmysh told The Associated Press.
That region is notorious for its long, harsh winters. The town is near Vorkuta, whose coal mines were among the most arduous in the gulag, the Soviet system of prison camps.
Source: With information from AP
