Putin shakes off health concerns as he confirms he WILL run for President again
Putin will stand in the 2024 election
REUTERS
Vladimir Putin has confirmed he will run for president again next year, despite months of rumours about his health.
The 71-year-old told soldiers fighting in the Ukraine war that he was to stand again in the 2024 election.
It opens up the path to Putin remaining in power until at least 2030.
The President was awarded Ukraine war veterans with Russia's highest military honour, the Hero of Russia gold star, when a lieutenant colonel asked the president to run again.
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"I will not hide that I have had different thoughts at different times but it is now time to make a decision," Putin told Zhoga and the other decorated soldiers.
"I will run for the post of president," Putin was shown in television footage saying in the gilded Georgievsky Hall, part of the Grand Kremlin Palace.
His confirmation, which had been expected, comes amid months of rumours about the former KGB man's health.
Earlier this year leaked documents from Ukraine included unsubstantiated intelligence that the Russian leader was undergoing chemotherapy.
Putin was giving medals to Russian war veterans when he confirmed his plans
REUTERS
The Russian President had always been expected to run
REUTERS
Suspicions have also been raised over the lack of appearances by the President in public over the past 18 months.
Much of the Putin's activity has taken place behind closed doors with only pictures and pre-recorded video released afterwards.
While Putin may face no real competition in the election, he is confronted with the most serious set of challenges any Kremlin chief has faced since Mikhail Gorbachev grappled with the crumbling Soviet Union more than three decades ago.
The war in Ukraine triggered the biggest confrontation with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis; Western sanctions have delivered the biggest external shock to the Russian economy for decades; and Putin faced a failed mutiny by Russia's most powerful mercenary, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in June.
Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash two months to the day after the mutiny.
Since the mutiny, Putin has tightened his control.
The West casts Putin as a war criminal and a dictator who has led Russia into an imperial-style land grab in Ukraine that has weakened Russia and bolstered Ukrainian statehood while uniting the West and handing Nato a mission again.
Putin, though, presents the war as part of a much broader struggle with the United States which the Kremlin elite says aims to cleave Russia apart, grab its vast natural resources and then turn to settling scores with China.