Russian president Vladimir Putin is poised to announce he will seek another six-year term as Russian president paving the way for the Kremlin chief to stay in power until 2030.
Officials suspect that Putin may announce he will take part in the election in March 2024, Kommersant reported, citing unidentified sources close to the presidential administration.
The newspaper said there were, however, other scenarios for what Putin might do at the conference and the final decision rested with him. The Kremlin did not immediately comment.
Putin, who was handed the presidency by Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has been leader for longer than any other Russian ruler since Josef Stalin, beating even Leonid Brezhnev’s 18-year tenure.
While many diplomats, spies, and officials have said they expect Putin to stay in power for life, there has yet to be any confirmation of his plans to run in the 2024 presidential vote.
Putin said last month he would make an announcement on his plans only after parliament called the presidential election – due by law to be done in December.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last month that if Putin decided to run, then no one would be able to compete with him.
While Putin may face no competition for votes, the former KGB spy faces the most serious set of challenges any Kremlin chief has faced since Mikhail Gorbachev grappled with the crumbling Soviet Union nearly four decades ago.
The war in Ukraine has triggered the biggest confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the biggest external shock to the Russian economy in decades.
Putin faced a failed mutiny by Russia’s most powerful mercenary, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in June. But Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash two months later.