Putin to seek new term as Russia president

MOSCOW – Agence France-Presse  

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Dec. 6 said he would seek a new six-year term in March elections, a move that would make him the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin.

Putin, who has run Russia both as president and prime minister for the past 18 years, is expected to sail to victory, with only token opponents competing against him.

"I will offer my candidacy for the post of president of the Russian Federation," he said during a visit to the GAZ car factory in Nizhny Novgorod, 400 kilometres east of Moscow.

He made the widely-expected announcement surrounded by cheering workers, who had prodded him to say whether he would seek a fourth presidential term in a carefully-choreographed ceremony.

"There is perhaps no better place and better excuse to announce this," Putin said. "Russia will go only forward. And no-one will ever stop her."  Predictably, Russian politicians praised the announcement.

But top Putin critic Alexei Navalny, who has declared a Kremlin bid despite not being allowed to run due to a suspended sentence for fraud, called the president a "swindler."        

"I suggest we don't agree," Navalny, a 41-year-old Western-educated lawyer, said on Twitter, referring to Putin's plans.

Social networks were abuzz, with many ridiculing the Kremlin strongman and some comparing him to Robert Mugabe, the ousted leader of Zimbabwe.

"Vladimir Vladimirovich has decided to play the old Russian game dubbed 'Out of the Kremlin feet first,'" said one critic, Aleksandr Kommari, on Facebook.

Muscovite Kirill Goncharov said he went to school and graduated from university under Putin.

"Time -- the most important thing every person has -- will be wasted on Vladimir Putin realising his personal ambitions," he said on Facebook.

Putin's statement came as Russia reeled from a decision by the International Olympic Committee to ban the country from the Winter Games as punishment over claims of state-orchestrated doping.

But despite a litany of problems including corruption, poverty and poor healthcare, the 65-year-old leader enjoys approval ratings of 80 percent.

Just hours earlier Putin visited a glitzy ceremony for volunteers in Moscow where he sought to rouse supporters.

"I want to ask, do you trust and support me?" he addressed the huge audience of mostly young people. "Yes," the audience chanted. 

Prominent athletes and Soviet-era celebrities such as 83-year-old actor Vasily Lanovoi, took to the stage to extol Russian successes, such as Soviet victory in World War II.

Cosmonaut Sergei Ryazansky addressed the audience via video link from the International Space Station.

Putin first became president after Boris Yeltsin sensationally resigned on New Year's Eve 1999. At the end of his second term in 2008 he handed power to his protege Medvedev.

Putin then served a term as prime minister -- although few doubted who was really in charge -- and returned as president in 2012.

If he extends his rule to 2024, Putin will have led Russia longer than Leonid Brezhnev, who presided over an era of stagnation from 1964 to 1982 and became the target of derision in his later years.

Some analysts say that after 18 years of leadership -- both as president and prime minister -- Putin fatigue may be spreading across the country.

Many Russians say they would vote for Putin simply because they do not see an alternative, given the former KGB officer's chokehold on domestic politics.

But what comes after Putin's expected re-election and later, after his new term ends in 2024, is the bigger question, analysts say.

"The main intrigue is, what will happen after 2018, how the configuration of power will be changing," Tatyana Stanovaya, a Paris-based analyst for the Centre of Political Technologies in Moscow, told AFP.