The date of the next Russian presidential election will be officially announced soon, the head of the Communist Party (CPRF), Gennady Zyuganov, claimed on Tuesday.
The Russian Federation Council – the upper house of parliament – will launch the election campaign on December 13, Zyuganov told journalists, without revealing his sources. He also leads his party’s faction in the Russian State Duma – the lower house of parliament.
The Federation Council has yet to confirm Zyuganov’s claims. “I have no such information, neither official, nor semi-official,” the head of the Rules Committee, Vyacheslav Timchenko, told Interfax news agency. He also said that the upper house of parliament will not determine its agenda for the December 13 session until the day before.
Under Russian law, the presidential election should take place at some point in mid-March. The Federation Council is expected to announce the date 90 to 100 days before the election, meaning approximately between December 8 and 18.
No candidates have officially announced plans to run for the nation’s highest office. The Kremlin said earlier this month that President Vladimir Putin had not yet decided whether or not he would run again. “No decision on this issue has been made yet,” presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at the time.
When asked at the Eastern Economic Forum in September whether or not he would seek another term, Putin responded that he would decide once the date of the next election was set. In November, Russian business daily Kommersant reported that the president could run in March.
Zyuganov has run for president several times in his political career. Although he has never won, he has regularly come in second. His best results were in 1996, when he received 40% of the vote in the second round of the election, in which he ran against the incumbent at the time, Boris Yeltsin.
The last time Zyuganov took part in the presidential race was 2012, when he gained just over 17% of the vote.
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