The Russian presidential election begins on Friday and ends on Sunday, March 17. As the war over Ukraine enters its third year, the Kremlin has four candidates running for president.
Although the Kremlin announced on Tuesday that Vladimir Putin is not facing any serious challenger, the Russian czar will begin his election campaign against three candidates starting on Friday.
Here's the most important thing we know about these contenders.
Vladislav Tavankov
- Deputy Speaker of the Russian Duma and member of the “New People's” party, the only party that has opposed Russia's recognition of the independence of Ukraine's separatist-controlled Luhansk and Donetsk regions in 2022 from the start.
- Davankov seeks to sit at the negotiating table with Ukraine to hold peace talks.
- In his election manifesto, he calls for the normalization of relations between Russia and the West, an end to persecution of enemies, and allowing intellectual freedom.
- Vladislav Davankov was born on February 25, 1984 in the city of Smolensk, 400 kilometers from the Russian capital Moscow.
- He graduated from the School of Economics and Law in 2002, then moved to Moscow to study modern and contemporary history at Moscow State University, from which he graduated in 2006 and received a PhD in Social Sciences in 2008.
Leonid Slutsky
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He is the leader of the far-right nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and assumed the presidency in 2022 after the death of leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
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Chairman of the party's Parliamentary Constituency in the State Duma (Parliament), and since October 2016 the Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs.
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He participated in solving the problems of the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, especially in the return of property. He also followed the situation of Russian-speaking citizens in the Baltic countries.
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An opponent of Western policy, he was also a supporter of Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, which placed him under Western sanctions.
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Slutsky supports a Russian invasion of Ukraine and promised in his election campaign a final and swift victory over Kiev if he wins.
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Slutsky, 50, was accused by a group of female journalists of sexual harassment in 2018, but was later acquitted.
Nikolai Kharidonov
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A candidate of the Russian Communist Party, he serves as chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on Far Eastern and Arctic Development. He was a member of the Soviet Communist Party before it was banned in 1991.
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In 1993, he co-founded the Russian Agrarian Party and became its vice-chairman. In the same year, he was elected a member of the Duma on behalf of the party, and became the head of its parliamentary constituency and a member of the Committee on Agricultural Affairs.
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He won all subsequent parliamentary elections as the candidate of the Communist Party. He became famous for the phrase, “We've lost the game in capitalism, enough with failed experiments.”
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The current elections are the second clash between Nikolai and Putin. The 75-year-old ran in the 2004 election but lost to Putin with 13.4% of the vote, while Putin won 71.91%.
