-
Election will be conducted from 8 am till 8 pm."
-
Citizens should present their valid Russian ID at the polling station and be 18 years of age.
Image: FILE
The District Electoral Commission has invited citizens of the Russian Federation in Kenya to cast votes for the President of the Russian Federation.
In a statement, the board said that the election will be held on March 17, this year at The Russian Embassy in Nairobi from 8 am till 8 pm.
“Citizens of the Russian Federation are invited to cast a vote at the election of the President of the Russian Federation at the polling station which will be opened at the Russian Embassy in Nairobi, Lenana road,” reads the statement.
“Elections will be held on March 17, 2024, from 8 am till 8 pm."
Citizens should present their valid Russian ID at the polling station and be 18 years of age.
On December 7, members of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly voted unanimously to approve a decree setting the election date.
The election is set to potentially move President Vladimir Putin closer to a fifth term in office.
“With this decision, we are effectively launching the start of the election campaign,” Valentina Matviyenko, head of the chamber said.
For the first time, residents of the parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine annexed by Russia would take part in the vote, she added.
Despite Putin being among the candidates who will vie for the position, Nikolay Kharitonov will vie to represent the Communist Party, which has been allowed to run a candidate in each election this century but has not gained a fifth of the vote share since Putin’s first presidential election.
Two other Duma politicians, Leonid Slutsky and Vladislav Davankov, are also running.
Davankov is deputy chair of the Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, while Slutsky represents the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, the party previously lead by ultra-nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who died in 2022. All are considered to be reliably pro-Kremlin.
According to Russian election laws, candidates put forward by a party that is not represented in the State Duma or at least a third of regional legislatures have to submit at least 100,000 signatures from 40 or more regions.
Those running independently of any party would need a minimum of 300,000 signatures from 40 regions or more.