Putin will announce his retirement? The Kremlin's "plan" for the elections in Russia

Less than a year remains until the Russian presidential elections, which are expected to take place in March 2024, in which President Vladimir Putin will have the right to run for a fifth term. This, after the amendment approved by the Kremlin in the Russian constitution in 2020, which basically "resets" the number of terms of the president, and will allow Putin to run again as a first term. However, the upcoming election will be different from its predecessors, as it will take place in the shadow of the war in Ukraine , the sanctions of the Western countries and the almost complete absence of the opposition.

Although the Kremlin has so far refrained from officially announcing whether Putin intends to run for another term or not, political analysts in Russia have estimated that the Russian parliament has already begun preparations for the upcoming election. Commentator Alexey Mukhin claimed that the Kremlin has already decided that the president will indeed run for another term, expecting that the war in Ukraine will only be a backdrop for the elections, and will not be at the head of the campaign. In a conversation with the "Al-Arabi Al-Jadid" newspaper, he noted that "Plan A of the Kremlin is Putin's contest in the elections, together with the communist and liberal-democratic parties that will support him indirectly."

Vladimir Putin (Photo: Reuters)

Howitzer cannon in the war in Ukraine (Photo: REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo)

The commentator also noted that as for the candidates who may compete in the election race, "the Communist Party may nominate its leader, Gennady Zyuganov , who is a partner and associate of Putin, which will strengthen the relationship between the Communist Party and the Kremlin." Zyuganov is considered one of the prominent figures in the Russian political scene, when in the presidential elections held in 1996, he reached the second round and lost to Boris Yeltsin . Zyuganov also participated in the presidential elections in 2000, 2008 and 2012. In 2018, the Communist Party decided to promote the candidate Pavel Grodinin , who came in second place, after Putin, with 12% of the votes, the lowest result for the party in all the election campaigns.

The Binarabi newspaper "Al-Arabi Al-Jadid" noted that the upcoming election campaign will be different from the previous one, in the almost complete absence of the opposition in Russia, which in any case is almost illegal. This, against the backdrop of the Kremlin's war on the independent media and opposition activists who find themselves behind bars .

The Kremlin seems determined to hold the elections on time. The Russian newspaper RBC reported earlier this month that Kremlin officials held a seminar with regional political parties in order to increase the voter turnout, with the intention of increasing the vote for the "main candidate", Vladimir Putin. This was also done before the presidential elections in 2018, when the deputy governors were instructed to reach the "70%-70%" equation, meaning that the percentage of the vote would be similar to the percentage of voters for President Putin. It is important to note that the last elections were held on the fourth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea, on March 18, 2018, when Putin won 76.7% of the voters, while the participation rate was 67.5%.