Vladimir Putin is going to run for the presidency, the 65-year-old Russian leader has declared his intention to seek re-election in 2018.
President Putin attended the meeting with car factory workers in the city of Nizhny Novgorod on Wednesday afternoon, the Russian leader decided to announce his intention to run for the presidency again in front of thousands of GAZ plant workers.
“I will put forward my candidacy for the post of president of the Russian Federation,”
said Putin and ended the rumours about his plans.
That decision of the 65-year-old Putin made him a records man; in 2017, Putin passed Leonid Brezhnev’s record of 6,602 days in office. Moreover, the Russian president has placed the future at the centre of his now official campaign pitch. Thus, if Vladimir Vladimirovich completes the next term in full, he will de facto have ruled Russia for 24 years! The entire epoch.
If Vladimir Putin wins in 2018 run (he definitely will reach this goal), he will have spent 24 years as Russian leader by the end of his term in 2024, including four years when he was prime minister but still called the shots.
“Russia will continue moving forward, and nobody will ever be able to stop this forward movement,”
promised Putin during the meeting with the workers in Nizhny Novgorod in what may be an early sign that the campaign would invoke nationalist rhetoric of a Russia facing off against a hostile West. The social media reacted immediately:
’24 years of a headache for the western leaders,’
wrote one user.
Putin vs Sobchak: 2018 Russian election
Putin has spent a year dodging the question about whether he would run in the elections. Even earlier on Wednesday, the Russian president was coy about seeking re-election when he took to the stage at a youth volunteer forum in Moscow and was asked the question directly.
“I want to ask, do you trust and support me?”
Putin asked the audience, which prompted a resounding chorus of “Yes!”
“The decision will be taken and announced in the near future,”
said Putin laconically but didn’t reveal how soon.
Rissian ruler’s participation is entirely unsurprising and for a long time has been taken as a given, with the only intrigue over when exactly he would announce his campaign and what kind of issues he would run on. One of 2018 presidential election rivals is Ksenia Sobchak, the daughter of his mentor Anatoly Sobchak.
