:quality(85)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/CUN357BM4V337BZQEZIKCPB6VU.jpg "A third candidate for the presidency of Russia withdrew from the electoral race")
An independent candidate for the Russian presidential elections, Anatoli Batashov, has withdrawn from the race just two months before the elections are scheduled to take place in March. Batashov, known for his work as a blogger representing the Greens, made the decision after failing to gather at least 300,000 signatures, which are necessary for registration. He stated, “I am not going to continue in this 2024 cycle. Yes, we have done a colossal job, we have done the impossible. None of the Green politicians had risen so high. I am the first green candidate in history to run in the Russian presidential elections.”
This announcement comes shortly after Andrei Bogdanov, the founder of the Russian Party of Freedom and Justice, also withdrew from the race. Additionally, Sergei Baburin has confirmed that he will support the current president, Vladimir Putin, further reducing the number of candidates in the running.
Currently, there are four candidates whose application has been registered by the Central Electoral Commission: Leonid Slutski for the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, Nikolai Jaritonov for the Communist Party of Russia, Vladislav Davankov for New People, and Putin, who is running as an independent candidate.
The decision to withdraw from the race comes just days after Putin was formally registered as a candidate for the presidential election, in which he will be running for re-election for a fifth six-year term as the leader of the Kremlin. The Central Electoral Commission reported that it only detected 0.15% of invalid signatures among the 60,000 analyzed, well below the maximum allowed of 5%.
Putin, who has been in power in Russia since 2000, is running as an independent candidate but has the support of the Kremlin party, United Russia. With Putin’s registration confirmed, the Central Electoral Commission is now tasked with deciding on the registration of the remaining candidates by February 10, ahead of the elections scheduled to take place from March 15 to 17.