This Friday the 5th National Election Commission of Russia authorized the registration of Leonid Slutsky, of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, and Vladislav Davankov, of the New People’s Party, as candidates for the March 2024 presidential elections in which the clear favorite is the current president Vladimir Putinwho will try for re-election.
Master and lord of Russian politics since he assumed the presidency in 2000, Putin’s last re-election was recorded in 2018 when he won with 76.69% of the votes compared to 11.77% for Pavel Grudini, his most close competitor.
A new law signed in 2021 also opened the doors for him to continue leading Russia until 2036.
For the elections to be held between March 15 and 17, Putin will face – for now – two politicians who agree both in their vision of national foreign policy and in the internal management from the Legislature controlled by the ruling United Russia.
A month ago, the National Electoral Commission rejected the registration of journalist Yekaterina Duntsova, who is in favor of the end of the war in Ukraine; and recently reported that the registration of Nikolai Kharitonov, Putin’s rival in the 2004 elections, has not yet been accepted.
All of these conditions, and the profiles of his virtual electoral rivals, raise suspicions about Putin’s attempts to give a democratic veneer to elections that are clearly guaranteed.
– TWO WEAK RIVALS –
Slutsky, born in Moscow 56 years ago and an economist by profession, worked as a banker and advisor to the mayor of Moscow before becoming a deputy in December 1999. Since then he has renewed his place in the Duma election after election and in 2016 became Chairman of the International Affairs Committee of Parliament.
From his positions he has defended and supported the Kremlin’s foreign policy on more than one occasion. This led to Slutsky becoming one of the first sanctioned by the United States government in 2014, after the Crimean annexation referendum. With the consequent crisis on the peninsula, Canada and the European Union included him on their own sanctioned lists.
An investigation by the independent channel Dozhd also revealed that Slutsky financed the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk through one of his foundations linked to the Russian Orthodox Church.
In 2018, Slutsky was accused of sexual harassment by three journalists and a television production company. However, and despite the fact that more and more voices were added against the parliamentarian, including a statement from the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs María Zajárova, Slutsky was freed from the scandal thanks to a shield provided by a Duma commission that determined that there were no “violations of conduct” on their part.
Davankov, on the other hand, serves as vice president of the Duma and his formation called New People has 15 of the chamber’s 450 seats.
Born 39 years ago in the city of Smolensk, Davankov worked at the Faberlic company, founded by the businessman and also politician Alexei Nechaev, who later led him to the nascent New People party, thus reaching the Duma in 2021.
A month later he was appointed vice-president of the Lower House of Parliament by decision of Vyacheslav Volodin. In 2022 he was sanctioned by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Ukraine, because he was one of the officials who ratified Putin’s decision to establish an alliance between Russia. and the separatist rebels of Donetsk and Lugansk.
Furthermore, the West accuses him of being someone “who provides political and economic support to Russia’s illegal attempts to annex sovereign Ukrainian territory through false referendums.”
