Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) has formally registered incumbent head of state Vladimir Putin as a self-nominated presidential candidate to be on the ballot in the upcoming election on March 15-17.
Putin is the fourth presidential candidate to be registered by the CEC. Earlier, the federal election authority registered three candidates: Leonid Slutsky of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), Vladislav Davankov of New People and Nikolay Kharitonov of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF).
The upcoming presidential election will be the fifth such contest in Putin’s political career. He was first elected president in 2000, and was re-elected in 2004, and then again in 2012, after a four-year term as prime minister in 2008-2012, and again in 2018.
