Russia 2024 Election: Here's Outlining Finalised Ballots With Four candidates including Putin

Central Election Commission (CEC) Chair of the Russian Federation, Ella Pamfilova, on Thursday released the names of the four candidates on the finalised ballots for Russia’s three-day presidential election scheduled in the upcoming month of March. The state parliament set March 17 as the official date for the 2024 presidential polls that could cement Russia’s President Vladimir Putin fifth term in the office.

While two of the candidates are expected to contest in the are for the first time, the other two will appear to challenge Putin for the first time. Critics say that Putin has exercised control on the political system during 24 year rein in power, and his challengers are either imprisoned or are in exile abroad.

This year, a pro-peace candidate has emerged to run in the election. Yekaterina Duntsova, who widely campaigned to end what Russia’s President Putin labels as “special military operation” in Ukraine, vouched to register with Russia’s Central Election Commission. The former journalist, like some of the other candidates, were not registered, joining leader of the Communists of Russia party Sergei Malinkovich, candidate from the Civil Initiative party Boris Nadezhdin, blogger Rada Russkikh and environmental activist Anatoly Batashev.

The regional legislator envisioned a Russia that’s “peaceful, friendly and ready to co-operate with everyone on principle of respect.” She gathered 300,000 signatures of support from nearly 40 Russian regions.

“Of course, collecting signatures is a huge job and I hope that people will be actively taking part,” she had told journalists in Moscow. The latter maintained that it is necessary that the Russian citizens “present an alternative” to Putin and his policies, adding that if elected, her first presidential decree would mandate pardon of the Russia’s “political prisoners” and opposition figures.

Yekaterina Duntsova’s initial nomination by a group of supporters, was rejected by the CEC citing errors in the paperwork, including spelling. The Supreme Court also rejected Duntsova’s appeal against the commission’s decision.

Russia’s election commission also barred a popular anti-war challenger of Putin, Boris Nadezhdin, denying him registration as a candidate in next month's presidential vote. The critic of President Putin’s war in Ukraine was denied candidacy as more than 15% of the signatures, an estimated 105,000, that he presented were detected to be flawed. At least 9,000 were invalid, as per Russian election commission, that cited violations.

The 60 year old, whose bid was rejected, said that he would challenge the decision in Russia's Supreme Court.

At the meeting, the CEC recommended denying registration to Nadezhdin due to forged signatures of deceased people, and violations among the collectors, as well as over issue of Nadezhdin’s representatives absent from the inspection at the Central Election Commission.

While Russia’s Central Election Commission dropped a number of candidates for fake signatures exceeding the possible threshold of 5% and “dead souls” in the documents, here are the four candidates who have made it to ballot.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Russia’s sitting president

On January 22, the Russian Central Election Commission was handed at least 95 boxes with signatures in support of sitting Russian President, Putin. More than 3.5 million people are reported to have backed his nomination in the upcoming March election, the First Vice-Speaker of the Federation Council Andrei Turchak told Russian state press. Putin, who was elected as the President of Russia in March 2000, is currently serving his fourth term. He was re-elected in the year 2004, 2012 and 2018, and is eligible to contest in the upcoming race owing to the adoption of amendments to the Constitution that he approved.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin has been registered as the candidate for the March 2024 election by the Central Election Commission on January 29. The incumbent is now officially a presidential candidate for an election scheduled for March 17 due to the newly amended laws. 

Putin who has been the president or prime minister since 1999 in Russia, has the right to seek two more six-year terms and and stay in office until 2036. The 71-year-old has become the longest-serving head of the state since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Putin is running as the self-nominated candidate. 

Russia's President is the fourth registered candidate after Vladislav Davankov from New People, Nikolai Kharitonov from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and Leonid Slutsky from the Liberal Democratic Party. Both the parties are represented in the State Duma and therefore the signatures aren’t needed.

New People Party’s Vladislav Davankov

The Deputy Speaker of the Russian State Duma and the member of the New People party,  Vladislav Davankov, is represented in the lower house of parliament and made it to the ballot. He did not have to collect signatures in support as the party is represented in the Russian parliament. The Central Election Commission registered him on January 5. Engaged in the entrepreneurship before coming into politics, Davankov, in 2013, took the post of vice president of Faberlic, founded by entrepreneur of the party and politician Alexei Nechaev.

In 2020, he participated in the formation of the New People party, which subsequently obtained a faction in the State Duma. In the September, the New People’s candidates won seats in four regional parliaments and the city council in Tomsk, where the United Russia suffered a significant loss. “The maximum agenda was to get through in all regions where we applied [to participate] in the elections: to six regional legislative assemblies and the municipal councils in Tomsk, Krasnodar, and Rostov,” Nechayev at the time told Meduza. The party failed to garner five percent that was needed to be elected to city council.

Leonid Slutsky of Russia’s ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR)

LDPR leader, Leonid Slutsky,  was nominated as a presidential candidate in December 2023 and has been registered on the ballot by the Russian CEC on December 1. The commission approved his participation in the elections unanimously, Kremlin Pravda is reporting. He was the first candidate to be guaranteed on the ballot other than Russia’s president Putin. LDPR candidate was elected to Russia’s State Duma in 1999, later in 2003 and was re-elected in 2007, 2011, 2016 and 2021. The popular Liberal Democratic Party of Russia during the quasi-fascist years was founded by Zhirinovsky in 1992, and has settled into its role as an integral party of Russia vouching for democracy.

Since 2016, Slutsky has headed the lower house of parliament committee on international affairs. He even appeared at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in June alongside an AI chat bot version of Zhirinovsky. A Berlin-based political scientist Nikolay Petrov describes Slutsky as “slippery.” “The party’s voters are used to having Zhirinovsky as their commanding, quick-witted, bright, and inexperienced leader. In that sense, Slutsky is his complete opposite,” he says.

In May 2022, the politician replaced Vladimir Zhirinovsky as head of the LDPR, becoming the new chairman of the party. After the start of the war in Ukraine, Slutsky was part of the negotiation group between Russia and Ukraine. He was at centre of a sexual harassment scandal that took place in Russia’s State Duma in 2018. The latter dismissed the sexual harassment claims as “provocations” and added that he was smeared as a “Russian Harvey Weinstein.”

Nikolai Kharitonov, Communist Party of the Russian Federation

State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Nikolai Kharitonov, is on the ballot and will contest in the upcoming 2024 election for the second time. His candidacy was proposed by the head of the party, Gennady Zyuganov. He was registered by the Russian CEC on January 9.

Kharitonov became the member of the Agrarian Party of Russia in the year 1990s, and joined the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in 2007.He heads the parliamentary committee for the development of the Far East and the Arctic in the State Duma. In March 2004, he contested in the race with Putin in the presidential election, and placed second with 13.69 percent of the vote.