INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Sixteen candidates have filed to run for Russia's presidency next year, officials said Wednesday, in an election that is expected to easily
hand Vladimir Putin a fifth term.Moscow has for years sidelined opposition figures from elections and political life, a clampdown that
accelerated after the Kremlin ordered Russian troops into Ukraine in 2022."So far, we have received applications from 16 candidates for the
presidential election," the chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC) Ella Pamfilova was cited as saying by the state-run RIA
Novosti news agency.Putin confirmed this month during a meeting with military veterans that he would join the election scheduled to be held
next year over three days beginning March 15.The CEC said it would also hold the ballot in four Ukrainian regions partially occupied by
Russian forces and in the Crimean peninsula, annexed from Kyiv in 2014.The Kremlin-friendly Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) of Russia this
week nominated a former negotiator for the Ukraine conflict, Leonid Slutsky, as a candidate.He said his candidacy would not "take away
votes" from Putin.Candidates must file applications to run in the March vote by Dec
27, election rules state, after which they will be required to gather thousands of signatures from supporters to secure a place on the
ballot.Igor Girkin, a hardline nationalist turned Kremlin critic who is in detention awaiting trial on extremism charges, said he wanted to
challenge Putin.Jailed opposition figure Alexei Navalny was barred from running in elections in 2018 due to an old fraud charge that his
allies said was politically motivated.
