Page 11 - Russia OUTLOOK 2024

The office of president was established in Russia in the spring of 1991. Since then, presidential elections have been held seven times: in 1991, 1996, 2000 (early), 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2018.
Around 110mn people have the right to vote in Russia but around 70-80mn people usually cast ballots.
Putin formally declared himself a candidate on December 8 and had clearly started a presidential campaign already in November 2023 by dramatically stepping up his public appearances and mixing with regular Russians.
Putin became acting president on December 31, 1999 after Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly stepped down due to health reasons. He was formally elected on July 9, 2000 with 53% of the vote – his lowest share ever – and was re-elected in 2004 with 71.3% of the vote.
Technically limited to two terms in office by the Russian constitution, Putin has served as president for over 20 years. He stepped down from the presidency in 2008 to become prime minister, trading places with his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, who ran for president that year and served one term in office, before he stepped aside and allowed Putin to retake the president’s job. Today Medvedev serves as the deputy head of the Russian Security Council – a body with little formal power, but extremely influential and a separate source of power.
Putin won the 2012 elections with 63.6% of the vote and was re-elected with 76.7% of the vote in 2018.
In 1991 the president was elected for a term of five years. In 1993, the presidential term in office was reduced to four years. Amendments to the constitution in 2012 extended the presidential term from four to six years.
He can stand for a de facto third term after the Constitution was amended again in 2020 that removed the stipulation that no person could serve as president for more than two terms "in a row". The change in the Constitution also reset the constitutional clock on term-counts, bolstering his claim to be able to serve for another two terms up until 2036.
Putin has already served as president for longer than any other Russian ruler since Josef Stalin, beating even Leonid Brezhnev's 18-year tenure.
Interestingly, Putin has shied away from changing the Constitution to nix term limits altogether, as most of his peers in the FSU have done. Putin is very cautious when it comes to protecting his legitimacy and avoids heavy-handed measures like giving himself power for life or expropriating the property of oligarchs by fiat.
This usually leads to complicated machinations that have a net result of handing him absolute power but maintaining a sheen of legality.
The anticipated major personnel reshuffle in Russia is expected to occur in May 2024, two months after Putin's next presidential term begins and the current cabinet resigns. This reshuffle, while potentially affecting numerous
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