MOSCOW (AP) – Russia's state election commission on Friday registered the first two candidates to run against President Vladimir Putin in March elections, where Putin's victory is all but certain.
The commission approved the inclusion of Leonid Slutsky of the Nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and Vladislav Davankov of the New People's Party on the ballot for the March 15-17 vote.
Neither poses a serious challenge to Putin, who has dominated Russian politics since taking office in 2000. Both candidates' parties have support in the Legislative Assembly, which is backed by Putin's power base, the United Russia Party.
As chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the State Duma, Mr. Slutsky has been a prominent supporter of the Kremlin's increasingly anti-Western foreign policy. In the last presidential election in 2018, the party's candidates received less than 6% of the vote.
Mr. Davankov is the Deputy Speaker of the State Duma. His party was founded in 2020 and holds 15 seats in the 450-member lower house.
The Communist Party has listed Nikolai Kharitonov as its candidate, but the election commission has not officially registered him. Kharitonov was the party's candidate in 2004, finishing second to Putin.
A Russian politician who campaigned for peace in Ukraine was rejected from the presidential vote last month.
The election commission refused to accept Ekaterina Duntsova's initial nomination by a group of supporters, citing errors in documentation, including spelling. The Supreme Court subsequently dismissed Dantsova's appeal against the commission's decision.
Putin is running as an independent candidate, and his campaign headquarters, along with branches of the ruling United Russia party and a political coalition called the Popular Front, are collecting signatures in support of his candidacy. Under Russian law, independent candidates must be endorsed by at least 500 supporters and must collect at least 300,000 signatures from more than 40 regions.
