Oct 7 (Reuters) – Ramzan Kadyrov, head of the Russian region of Chechnya and a close ally of Vladimir Putin, proposed on Saturday postponing the presidential elections scheduled for March due to the war in Ukraine or limiting them to a single candidate: the current president.
The Kremlin leader, who turned 71 on Saturday, has said he will not announce whether he will run before parliament calls elections, which by law must happen in December.
Putin has controlled Russia for more than two decades and, having suppressed all significant political opposition, would be almost certain to win an election and, as expected, extend his stay in the Kremlin until 2030.
However, Russia’s failures in the war, which Moscow calls a “special military operation”, have made events less predictable.
According to the state news agency RIA, Kadyrov spoke on Saturday at a rally in the center of Grozny, the Chechen capital, attended by some 25,000 people, on the occasion of Putin’s birthday.
“I propose now, while the ‘special military operation’ is being carried out, to unanimously decide that we will have one candidate in the elections: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,” Kadyrov said.
“Or temporarily suspend the elections, because today there is no one else who can defend our country,” added the Chechen strongman, a Putin protégé who has raised his public profile since the war began.
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has become his biggest challenge.
Far from quickly gaining control of the country and thwarting its attempts to move closer to the West, Moscow controls less than a fifth of Ukraine, with front lines static, military spending skyrocketing and hundreds of thousands of Russians fighting a war to which did not volunteer.
It has also severed relations with the West, which has imposed sweeping economic sanctions, armed Ukraine at enormous cost, and expanded and strengthened the US-led NATO alliance. (Reporting from Reuters, written by Kevin Liffey; Edited in Spanish by Javier Leira)
Source: Ambito
