THE Vladimir Putin has decided to run in March’s presidential election, a move that would keep him in power until at least 2030, as the Kremlin chief looks to keep Russia at the helm through its most dangerous period in decades, six people said. sources cited by Reuters.

However, his representative Kremlin Dmitry Peskovasked about the publication, said that the Russian president has not made any announcements about whether he will run for a new term and that it has not yet been announced that he will run an election campaign.

“The president has not made any announcements” about it, Peskov said. “And the campaign hasn’t been officially announced yet,” he said.

Putin, who took over from Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has already served as president longer than any other Russian leader since Joseph Stalin, even surpassing Leonid Brezhnev’s 18-year tenure.

Putin turned 71 on October 7.

The sources, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues surrounding Kremlin politics, said news of Putin’s decision was beginning to trickle down from above and that his advisers were now preparing for the campaign and his (re)election.

For Putin, who polls show enjoys an 80% approval rating inside Russia, the election is a formality since he is a candidate: with the support of the state, state-run media and almost no public dissent in mainstream politics, it is sure to win.

“The decision has been made — he will be a candidate,” said one of the sources with knowledge of the planning. A premeditated hint on the matter is expected to come in a few weeks, another source said, confirming a Kommersant newspaper report last week.

Another source familiar with the Kremlin’s thinking confirmed that the decision has been made and that Putin’s advisers are preparing for his participation in the election. Another three sources said the decision has been made: Putin will run.

“The world we see is very dangerous,” said one of the sources.

A foreign diplomatic source, who also requested anonymity, said Putin made the decision recently and that the announcement would be made soon.

While many foreign diplomats, spies and officials say they expect Putin to remain in power for life, there has so far been no specific confirmation of his plans to run in the March 2024 presidential election.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in September that if Putin decided to run, then no one would be able to run against him.

The Kremlin has dismissed reports that Putin is unwell as disinformation spread by the West.

Russia at war

While Putin may face no real competition in the election, the former KGB agent faces the most serious challenges of any Kremlin chief since Mikhail Gorbachev was battling the collapse of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.

The war in Ukraine has led to the biggest confrontation with the West since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Western sanctions have dealt the biggest external shock to the Russian economy in decades, and Putin has faced a failed rebellion by its most powerful mercenary. of Russia, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in June.

Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash two months after the mutiny.

The West views Putin as a war criminal and dictator who led Russia on an imperialist-style land grab that weakened Russia and forged Ukrainian national consciousness, while uniting the West and giving NATO a mission.

Putin, however, presents the war as part of a much wider struggle with the United States, which the Kremlin elite say is out to dismember Russia, grab its vast natural resources and then settle scores. them with China.

“Russia is facing the combined might of the West, so a big change will not be advisable,” said one of the sources.

Russian arms production has soared. Russia predicts that its economy of 2.1 trillion dollars will grow faster this year than that of the European Union. The price of Urals crude oil, the lifeblood of the Russian economy, averaged $81.52 a barrel in October.

For some Russians, however, the war showed the weaknesses of post-Soviet Russia.

Imprisoned Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny says Putin has led Russia into strategic impasse and destruction by building a fragile system of corrupt cronies that will ultimately bring chaos rather than stability.

“Russia is going backwards,” Oleg Orlov, one of Russia’s most prominent human rights activists, told Reuters in July. “We left communist totalitarianism, but now we’re back to a different kind of totalitarianism.”

Hundreds of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers are estimated to have been killed or wounded in just over 18 months of war, far more than official Soviet casualties during the entire war in Afghanistan (1979-1989).

Before his mutiny, Prigozhin criticized Putin’s generals for the war and what he described as its clumsy conduct and warned that Russia could face a revolution unless the elite got serious.

“This division may end like in 1917, with a revolution,” Prigozhin had said a month before his mutiny.