Russia’s Putin tells soldiers: I will run for president again in 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared he would run for office again in the 2024 election on Friday. This decision would allow the former KGB agent to remain in power until at least 2030. Putin made this announcement to troops who had participated in the conflict in Ukraine.

Putin, whom Boris Yeltsin gave the presidency on the final day of 1999, has already served as president for a more extended period than any previous ruler of Russia since Josef Stalin. He has even surpassed Leonid Brezhnev’s 18-year stint as president of Russia.

After Vladimir Putin presented the veterans of the Ukraine conflict with the Hero of Russia gold star, which is Russia’s highest military honor, Artyom Zhoga, a lieutenant colonel who was born in Ukraine during the Soviet era and who fights for Russia, requested that the president return to the presidency.

“I will not hide the fact that I have had different thoughts at different times, but it is now time to make a decision,” Putin said to Zhoga and the other troops who had been awarded. “I understand that there is no other way.”

Putin was seen on CCTV declaring, “I will run for the post of president,” when he was in the ornate Georgievsky Hall, which is a section of the Grand Kremlin Palace.

In a statement to the press following the event, Zhoga expressed his satisfaction with the fact that Putin had granted the request and said that the entire Russian government would back the decision.

A month ago, Reuters reported that Putin had decided to run for president.

Vladimir Putin, who is 71 years old, is confident that he will win the election because he has the government’s support, access to state-run media, and no opposition from the general public.

There is no obvious candidate to succeed him. Lawmakers saw the election in the opposition as a fig leaf of democracy that graces what they perceive to be the corrupt dictatorship that Putin has established in Russia.

They predict that in what has become a highly stage-managed simulation of democracy, a few other candidates who do not pose a danger will be put forward to run against Putin and will, as is customary, lose.

A crackdown on opponents and critics that has been going on for years and has been backed by sweeping new laws on “fake news” and “discrediting the army” has resulted in critics being handed lengthy prison sentences or fleeing overseas as the space for disagreeing with the government has rapidly decreased.

People who favor Vladimir Putin disagree with that view and refer to certain independent polls that demonstrate that he has approval ratings that are higher than 80 percent. During the instability that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, they argue that Putin has brought back order and some of the influence Russia had lost.

THE RUSSIA OF PUTIN
It is possible that Vladimir Putin may not face any significant opposition in the upcoming election. Yet, he is already facing the most significant set of issues that any Kremlin head has encountered since Mikhail Gorbachev struggled with the disintegration of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago.

The conflict in Ukraine sparked the most significant confrontation with the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962; Western sanctions have caused the most significant external blow to the Russian economy in decades; and in June, Putin was confronted with a failed mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the most potent mercenary in Russia.

Two months to the day after the mutiny, Prigozhin was killed in an aircraft crash while carrying out his duties. As a result of the rebellion, Putin has increased his level of control.

Putin is portrayed as a war criminal and a tyrant by the West. He is accused of leading Russia into an imperialistic land grab in Ukraine, which has resulted in the weakening of Moscow and the strengthening of Ukrainian statehood. Additionally, Putin is suspected of unifying the West and giving NATO another task.

On the other hand, Putin portrays the conflict as a component of a much larger conflict with the United States for a new global order. According to the elite of the Kremlin, this conflict is intended to sever Russia, seize its vast natural riches, and then shift to settling scores with China.

In the same way that Putin’s wager on a short conflict that would end in victory in February 2022 was unsuccessful, the West has also failed to achieve its publicly declared goals, which were to defeat Russia on the battlefield, to force Russian soldiers out of Ukraine, and to stir opposition to Putin.

It is estimated that the war has resulted in the deaths or injuries of hundreds of thousands of men from both Russia and Ukraine. Any side publishes no death counts.

The counteroffensive that Ukraine launched this year did not achieve any significant gains. Russia continues to hold around 17.5% of Ukrainian land, and Putin is more secure than he has ever been.

The failure of the sanctions imposed by the West, which Western officials said were the most severe sanctions ever placed on a major economy, has been seen as a source of pride for Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

This year, Russia’s economy, estimated to be worth $2.1 trillion, is expected to develop quicker than the eurozone or the United States. The oil that the world’s second-largest oil exporter exports is sold in every region of the planet.

THE WAR IN RUSSIA
Conversely, Russia has become more somber during this period of conflict, which critics say has revealed its faultlines under Putin. Two of these faultlines are a slow bureaucracy run by a single Kremlin official and a crackdown on dissent that has scared away some of the nation’s brightest minds.

Almost 32 years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, expectations were sparked that Russia would blossom into an open democracy. Opposition activists and journalists spoke to Reuters about their anxiety. They expressed their concern via their statements.

Alexei Navalny, a politician from the opposition who is now incarcerated, claims that Vladimir Putin has led Russia down a strategic dead end that will ultimately lead to its destruction. He has constructed a fragile system of corrupt sycophants that will ultimately bequeath turmoil rather than stability.

According to Reuters, Yekaterina Duntsova, who presents herself as a contender for the opposition’s presidential nomination, expressed her worry and expressed a desire for the violence in Ukraine to come to an end.

On the other hand, when people in Europe and the United States declare that Russia and the Russian people are Putin, it is not the correct statement. “When it comes to the war, I do not believe in the concept of collective guilt,” Duntsova stated.

“Not all of the people who live in this country made the decision.” The future of the conflict in Ukraine is not entirely apparent.