Page 13 - Russia OUTLOOK 2024

one. As a result, the Kremlin has set itself ambitious goals of a 70% turnout and 70% support for Putin.
The number of registered presidential candidates has varied from a high of 11 in 2000 to just four in 2008. Three women have run as candidates for the presidency: Ella Pamfilova (2000), Irina Khakamada (2004) and Ksenia Sobchak (2018).
As Putin is now 71 years old, no young candidates – anyone under 50 – are being allowed to run, for fear of highlighting the president’s advancing years.
Grigory Yavlinsky: As a result various candidates have been put up that are designed to enhance Putin’s appeal. Opposition leader and long-time liberal opposition Grigory Yavlinsky has been allowed to criticise the war in Ukraine, but in muted terms. Initially he was going to run, but withdrew in December. A former presidential candidate himself, he only won 1.5% of the vote the last time he stood and is not seen as a threat.
Nikolai Kharitonov: On 23 December, the Communist Party (KPRF) congress endorsed the nomination of State Duma deputy Nikolai Kharitonov, 75, to be the Communist candidate for president. Party leader Gennady Zyuganov was reluctant to participate in the campaign. He feared that a lacklustre result would jeopardise his standing within the party and disrupt plans for a smooth succession (at the ripe age of 79, this is increasingly on his mind). In contrast, the Presidential Administration saw Zyuganov's candidacy as vital. They view him as a political heavyweight whose involvement would lend greater legitimacy and decency to the campaign. A source close to the Communist Party revealed that in advance of their congress, Andrey Yarin, the head of the domestic policy department at the Presidential Administration, personally visited the State Duma to persuade Zyuganov to run. However, his efforts were unsuccessful.
The leader of the KPRF is a regular feature of Russian elections. A force to be reckoned with during the Yeltsin-era, the KPRF has faded into insignificance in the last two decades and become part of what is known as the “systemic opposition” – political parties in the Duma that make a lot of noise, but always follow the Kremlin’s lead on key pieces of legislation. The continued presence of the KPRF in the Duma, and Zhuganov as its leader for almost 30 years, is to appeal to pensioners and those that still yearn for a return to communism.
Two decades ago Zhuganov had an opportunity to modernise the party and bring in younger candidates with more progressive ideas on the lines of Western social democrats, but the old guard leadership felt threatened by this and stamped out this trend whenever they found it. The few young dynamic forward-thinking Communist Party candidates that made it into elections always did well, but without them the party has no appeal to the majority of modern Russians.
Vladislav Davankov: he is the New People party candidate and nominal “liberal” in the elections. The Kremlin initially encouraged the party’s leader, businessman Alexey Nechayev, to enter the race, but at the end of the day he managed to avoid participating. Davankov, who garnered considerable attention during his Moscow mayoral campaign in September (he was
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