Putin is the Kremlin’s longest-serving leader since dictator Joseph Stalin, who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953.
Vladimir Putin is projected to easily win a fifth term as Russian president, putting him on track to remain in the role until at least 2030, according to multiple sources.
Shortly after polls closed, the head of Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) said Putin had secured 87.9 percent of the vote, with 24.4 percent of votes counted, according to CNN.
He is the longest-serving Kremlin leader since dictator Joseph Stalin, who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953.
The 71-year-old autocrat’s re-election comes amid his ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which began in February 2022.
U.S. officials said in August that the total number of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers killed or wounded since the war began is approaching 500,000, and according to the nonprofit group Save the Children, an average of 42 civilians have been killed or injured a day in the two-year war.
2 years after the Russian invasion, Ukraine is still going strong — but the fight is not over
Putin previously worked as a foreign intelligence agent for the Russian intelligence agency KGB, before finally turning to politics in 1991.
He was appointed president in August 1999 by then-president Boris Yeltsin, who resigned on New Year’s Eve, leaving Putin as acting president until an official election a few months later.
Vladimir Putin is running for a fifth term as president of Russia, which would keep him in power until 2030.
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Vladimir Putin. Florian Gaertner/Photothek via Getty
At the time, the Russian constitution stipulated that no president could serve more than two consecutive four-year terms, meaning he would have had to leave office in 2008.
But at the end of his two terms, Putin endorsed Dmitry Medvedev for president. After Medvedev was elected, he agreed to install Putin as prime minister, allowing him to continue pulling strings within the Kremlin despite not holding the top title.
Medvedev also led the first major amendments to the Russian constitution — among them one that changed the length of presidential terms from four to six years, which took effect in 2012. That same year, Putin would take the seat again and was re-elected in 2018.
Vladimir Putin could remain in power until 2036 after a disputed vote changed the Russian constitution
He would have stepped down in 2024, but in 2020 Russia voted to amend the constitution again, once again extending presidential term limits and allowing Putin to legally remain in power as the country’s leader until 2036.
If he remains in office until 2036, Putin would then be in his 80s — and would have been in power in Russia for almost half his life.
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In recent years, the invasion of Ukraine has been both his focus and, some critics say, his undoing, as the war enters its third year and has prompted increasingly harsh sanctions against Russia.
Global tensions with Russia have been further exacerbated by the recent death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny at the age of 47 in February. Navalny, a longtime critic of Putin, was serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges when Russian officials said he died after walking around the Arctic penal colony where he was being held. Many are skeptical about the circumstances of Navalny’s sudden death, including the US government.
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Source: HIS Education