Putin during a previous election rally (French - archive)
Official sources said that Russian President Vladimir Putin will compete against three politicians who support the war on Ukraine in the presidential elections scheduled for next month, while an anti-war candidate has been excluded.
TASS said that the candidacy door for anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin was closed after the Central Election Commission prevented him last Thursday from submitting his candidacy under the pretext of irregularities in collecting the signatures required to support his candidacy.
Nadezhdin, who was excluded from running in the elections, had described the war in Ukraine as a "terrible mistake" and said - last Thursday - that he would appeal the Central Election Commission's decision before the Supreme Court in Russia.
The approved list included Vladislav Davankov, deputy speaker of the Russian Duma and a member of the New People's Party, Leonid Slutsky, leader of the pro-Kremlin ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, and Nikolai Kharitonov, the Communist Party's candidate.
Observers expect Putin (71 years old) to easily win next month's elections. Putin chose to run in the elections as an independent rather than a candidate for the ruling United Russia party.
Two months ago, former television journalist Ekaterina Dontsova was excluded from running, and Putin's critics said that the decision to ban her shows that no one with real opposition views will be allowed to run against him in the first presidential elections held since the start of the war on Ukraine 24 months ago, and they said that the elections are a fake process whose result one.
Source: Agencies