As Ukraine War drags on, Russia prepares for a 5th Vladimir Putin term

NEW DELHI: Amid the conflict in Ukraine, Russia will head to polls in March 2024 to elect a new President.

While the focus is on whether incumbent Vladimir Putin contests again, more important is whether there is any alternative, and more significantly, will some other leader’s emergence mean a major change in policies.

Under the law, the Russian presidential elections are to take place in mid-March. The Federation Council, the upper house of the Parliament, is expected to announce the date 90 to 100 days before the elections — approximately between December 8 and 18. These will be the first polls since the 2020 constitutional amendment, which set a limit of two presidential terms - but not retrospectively, thus allowing Putin to contest in 2024, and even 2030.

The possibility of the first proviso in these elections seems remote, going by the present array of candidates, declared or probable, unless Putin reprises the manoeuvre of his predecessor Boris Yeltsin in 1999.

Thwarted by the legislature in reinstalling his preferred choice Viktor Chernomyrdin as Prime Minister in 1998, Yeltsin had juggled through three candidates for the post before picking Putin, then the head of domestic intelligence agency, as head of government in August 1999.

Yeltsin then resigned unexpectedly at the end of the year, propelling Putin, his covert planned successor, to the top post.

Putin, who has announced that he will decide whether he will contest for his fifth term once the elections are formally declared — though sources indicate he will fight, is unlikely to be so capricious, or abrupt, in the rare case he holds back.

His chosen successor at the end of his first presidential stint (2000-08) was Dmitri Medvedev, whom he knew from St Petersburg in the post-Soviet era, who was associated with his administration since 2000, and announced as candidate months before the 2008 polls.

Significantly, Medvedev upstaged Putin’s fellow KGB colleague Sergei Ivanov, who was seen as a strong contender.

If Putin has any preference this time around, it remains a close-guarded secret, though names of Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, SVR Director Sergey Naryshkin, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, Medvedev and some others of his circle, have been speculated upon. To the second question of policy change, the prospects are infinitesimal, even if Putin hands over the baton, or by a miraculous marvel, some outlier wins. (IANS)

Also Read: There is only one Vladimir Putin: Kremlin

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