MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin announced on Wednesday that he
would seek a fourth term as president of Russia in a March election
that he is expected to win handily.
A full, six-year term until 2024 would make his 24-year tenure —
including his years as prime minister — the longest by a Russian
leader since Joseph Stalin sat in the Kremlin for 29 years. It is
widely believed that Mr. Putin wants to use what should be his last
term, barring further constitutional changes, to cement his place as
one of the more important historical figures ever to rule Russia.
It has been a somewhat improbable run for Mr. Putin, 65, who spent the
bulk of his early career as a middle-level K.G.B. agent in East
Germany.
Calling the collapse of the Soviet Union one of the greatest
catastrophes of the 20th century, he has built his formidable
popularity on the idea that Russia should restore its natural destiny
as a superpower, an equal to the United States in military might and
global influence.
His crowning achievement in pursuit of this goal was the 2014
annexation of Crimea, which has kept his popularity ratings around 85
percent ever since. Election day was moved to March 18, the fourth
anniversary of that annexation, as a pointed reminder to voters.
Mr. Putin made the long-anticipated announcement on the floor of a
vehicle factory in the northern industrial city of Nizhny Novgorod. He
delivered a brief statement in the seemingly spontaneous yet carefully
choreographed manner he favors for major appearances broadcast live on
state television.
It began with a worker climbing onto the stage set up for the occasion
at the Gorky Automobile Factory — known by its Russian acronym as GAZ
— to ask Mr. Putin if he would run, saying: “Today in this hall
everybody, without exception, supports you. Give us a gift, announce
your decision!”
Asked the same question on live television at national forum for
volunteer youths just hours earlier, Mr. Putin had said he was still
thinking about it.
This time, with the hall erupting in cheers of “GAZ supports you!,”
Mr. Putin said he was running. “There is no better space and no better
occasion to announce this,” he said. “I will run for the presidency of
the Russian Federation.”
The choice of venue and the occasion highlighted Mr. Putin’s support
base — workers of Russia’s big industrial enterprises. During the
street protests in Moscow in 2011-12, workers at a similar plant in
central Russia offered Mr. Putin their help in dispersing anti-Kremlin
protesters.
Mr. Putin is expected to cruise to re-election, not least because of
his popularity and the lack of serious challengers. In fact, the main
concern in the Kremlin now, according to political analysts of all
stripes, is that the lackluster slate of candidates could drive
turnout to historic lows and deprive Mr. Putin of a resounding
mandate.
But there is no denying Mr. Putin’s popularity. The 2014 Winter
Olympics in Sochi, Russia, dominated by Russia with 33 medals, also
fueled his ratings. The scandal over state-backed doping, which saw
Russia barred from the 2018 Winter Games, only seems to have bolstered
his standing, as it fits into his narrative of Russia as a besieged
fortress surrounded by enemies on all fronts.
Domestically, Russians experienced instability and poverty after the
1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. After assuming the presidency in
2000, Mr. Putin brought stability and an extended period of
prosperity, with Russians gaining more household income in the first
eight years of his term — mostly because of rising prices for energy,
the country’s main commodity — than during any other period in their
recent history.
That has gone into reverse in recent years, since the 2014 collapse in
the price of oil and the ruble. But Russians have yet to blame Mr.
Putin personally.
If anything, he popularity has been inching upward since the summer. A
poll by the Levada Center in September showed 52 percent of voters
supported him overall and 64 percent among those who said they would
vote. The poll was based on 1,600 people questioned on September 15 to
19, the center said.
His strongest rival, Aleksei Navalny, an anti-corruption crusader and
opposition politician who organized several large national protests
this year, has been barred from running because of a series of
criminal cases that he and rights advocates call politically
motivated. Yet, even if he were allowed to run, it is doubtful that he
would be popular enough to threaten Mr. Putin.
A recent entry into the race, Ksenia Sobchak, a journalist and
celebrity reality show host, as well as the daughter of Mr. Putin’s
political mentor, is running with what many consider at least the
tacit approval of the Kremlin, to divide the opposition vote.
The rest of the field is dominated by novices plugging a particular
cause or political war horses like the Communist Party candidate,
Gennady Zyuganov, and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a right-wing nationalist,
both septuagenarians who have unsuccessfully contested elections for
decades.
The Kremlin does not exactly encourage challengers. Opposition figures
get little or no access to national television, and there are
countless hurdles to registering as a candidate. To cite just one,
independent candidates have to collect hundreds of thousands of
signatures of endorsement from members of the public from at least 43
regions of Russia during an abbreviated, three-month campaign.
In 2008, term limits forced Mr. Putin to yield the presidency to a
handpicked successor, Dmitri Medvedev, and to slide into the prime
minister’s seat. But he assumed his old position in 2012 with a back
room maneuver that prompted mass street demonstrations.
Ever since, the Kremlin has set about undermining the independent news
media and any civic society organizations or other groups deemed as
having the ability to coordinate public demonstrations. Mr. Putin,
always quick to blame the West in general and the United States in
particular for any problems within Russia, accused Hillary Clinton,
then secretary of state, of organizing the street protests.
Once back in the presidency, Mr. Putin set about extending the
presidential term to six years. There has been widespread speculation
that he might fiddle with the constitution again this time to allow
him to run again. Yet, despite his popularity, many analysts said
Russians were not inclined to accept a president for life.
Some analysts consider Wednesday’s announcement as marking less the
start of the election campaign than the beginning of the struggle
within the Kremlin and the Russian elite to succeed Mr. Putin.
The initial reaction from the opposition was to try to laugh off the
inevitable. “He wants to stay in power for 21 years,” Mr. Navalny
wrote in a tweet, subtracting the years he was prime minister. “In my
view, that’s a bit too long. I suggest we don’t agree”
The official line was summed up by Ramzan Kadyrov, the pugnacious
ruler of Chechnya, a Russian republic that Mr. Putin has allowed him
to turn into something of a private fief.
“It’s only him who is capable of resisting the massive, ruthless and
unprecedented attack organized by our frenemies from the U.S. and
Western Europe,” Mr. Kadyrov wrote on Instagram.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/world/europe/russia-vladimir-putin-president.html