Russia closes presidential race candidate registration with Putin, 3 others -TASS

FILE PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council via video link at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia February 9, 2024. Sputnik/Sergei Ilyin/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

(Reuters) – Russia’s registration of candidates for the March presidential election has closed, TASS reported on Sunday, with a list including President Vladimir Putin, who is expected to win, and three politicians who all support Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

The list did not include the Russian anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin after the Central Election Commission (CEC) barred him on Thursday from running, saying it had found flawsin the collection of signatures required for the support of his candidacy.

The CEC registered Vladislav Davankov, deputy chair of the Russian Duma and a member of the New People caucus; Leonid Slutsky, the leader of the Kremlin-loyal ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR); and the Communist Party nominee, Nikolai Kharitonov.

FILE PHOTO: Vladislav Davankov, a representative of New People political party who plans to run for Russian president in the March 2024 election, his aides and supporters meet with journalists at an office of the Central Election Commission in Moscow, Russia, December 25, 2023. REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina/File Photo

Putin, 71, who has chosen to run as an independent rather than as the candidate of the ruling United Russia party and who has been Russia’s paramount leader since 2000 and controls all the state’s levers, is expected to easily win next month’s vote.

While nobody has expected the 60-year-old Nadezhdin – who has characterised Putin’s war in Ukraine as a “fatal mistake” – to win, his trenchant criticism has surprised some analysts. The Kremlin has said it does not see him as a serious rival to Putin.

FILE PHOTO: People walk past a bus with a portrait of Leonid Slutsky, leader of the Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) and presidential candidate for the upcoming 2024 election, in Saint Petersburg, Russia February 1, 2024. REUTERS/Anton Vaganov/File Photo

Nadezhdin said on Thursday he would challenge the CEC’s decision in Russia’s Supreme Court.

The war, which the Kremlin calls a “special military operation”, is nearing the end of its second year. It has killed thousands on both sides, displaced millions of Ukrainians, and turned scores of cities and villages into rubble.

(Reporting by Elaine Monaghan and Lidia Kelly; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)