Vladimir Putin meeting with students from Sirius Educational Centre, photo via Office of the President of RussiaBESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 601, October 1, 2017
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Russia will hold its next presidential elections in March 2018, and current president Vladimir Putin has yet to announce his intention to run. Russians are accustomed to Putin’s late announcements of his candidacy (as occurred in 2004 and 2012), and he is widely expected to run. He will almost certainly win, but will have to find ways to handle fundamentally different domestic circumstances both during the election and after it.
For the past several years, …read more