Vladimir Putin on Friday moved to prolong his grip on Russia for at least another six years, announcing his candidacy in the presidential election next March that he is all but certain to win.

Putin still commands wide support after nearly a quarter-century in power, despite starting an immensely costly war in Ukraine that has taken thousands of his countrymen’s lives, provoked repeated attacks inside Russia – including one on the Kremlin itself – and corroded its aura of invincibility.

A short-lived rebellion in June by mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin raised widespread speculation that Putin could be losing his grip, but he emerged with no permanent scars.

Putin announced his decision to run in the March 17 presidential election after a Kremlin award ceremony, when war veterans and others pleaded with him to seek re-election.

“I won’t hide it from you – I had various thoughts about it over time, but now, you’re right, it’s necessary to make a decision,” Putin said in a video released by the Kremlin after the event. “I will run for president of the Russian Federation.”

Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center noted that the announcement was made in a low-key way instead of a live televised speech, probably reflecting the Kremlin’s spin effort to emphasize Putin’s modesty and his perceived focus on doing his job as opposed to loud campaigning.

“It’s not about prosperity, it’s about survival,” Stanovaya observed. “The stakes have been raised to the maximum.”

About 80% of the populace approves of Putin’s performance, according to the independent pollster Levada Center. That support might come from the heart or it might reflect submission to a leader whose crackdown on any opposition has made even relatively mild criticism perilous.

Whether due to real or coerced support, Putin is expected to face only token opposition on the ballot.

Putin, 71, has twice used his leverage to amend the constitution so he could theoretically stay in power until he’s in his mid-80s. He is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who died in 1953.

In 2008, he stepped aside to become prime minister due to term limits but continued calling the shots. Presidential terms were then extended to six years from four, while another package of amendments he pushed through three years ago reset the count for two consecutive terms to begin in 2024.

“He is afraid to give up power,” Dmitry Oreshkin, a political analyst and professor at Free University of Riga, Latvia, told The Associated Press this year.

At the time of the amendments that allowed him two more terms, Putin’s concern about losing power may have been elevated: Levada polling showed his approval rating significantly lower, hovering around 60%.

In the view of some analysts, that dip in popularity could have been a main driver of the war that Putin launched in Ukraine in February 2022.

“This conflict with Ukraine was necessary as a glue. He needed to consolidate his power,” said commentator Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter now living in Israel.

Brookings Institution scholar Fiona Hill, a former U.S. National Security Council expert on Russian affairs, agrees that Putin thought “a lovely small, victorious war” would consolidate support for his reelection.

“Ukraine would capitulate,” she told AP this year. “He’d install a new president in Ukraine. He would declare himself the president of a new union of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia over the course of the time leading up to the 2024 election. He’d be the supreme leader.”

The war didn’t turn out that way. It devolved into a grueling slog in which neither side makes significant headway, posing severe challenges to the rising prosperity integral to Putin’s popularity and Russians’ propensity to set aside concerns about corrupt politics and shrinking tolerance of dissent.

Putin’s rule has spanned five U.S. presidencies, from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden. He became acting president on New Year’s Eve in 1999, when Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. He was elected to his first term in March 2000.

When he was forced to step down in 2008 by term limits, he shifted to the prime minister’s post while close ally Dmitry Medvedev served as a placeholder president.

When Putin announced he would run for a new term in 2012 and Medvedev submissively agreed to become prime minister, public protests brought out crowds of 100,000 or more.

Although Putin has long abandoned the macho photo shoots of bear hunting and scuba diving that once amused and impressed the world, he shows little sign of slowing down. Photos from 2022 of him with a bloated face and a hunched posture led to speculation he was seriously ill, but he seems little changed in recent public appearances.

“He’s a wartime president, is mobilizing the population behind him,” Hill said. “And that will be the message around the 2024 election, depending on where things are in the battlefield.”

Source: AP

Senate Republicans have blocked a move to pass an aid bill for Ukraine after failing to secure border compromises they sought in exchange.

The $110bn (£87.3bn) package included $61bn for Ukraine, as well as funds for Israel and aid for Gaza.

Republicans are insisting that any aid to Ukraine be tied to sweeping US immigration and asylum reforms.

The White House has warned that US funds for Ukraine could soon run out.

Senators voted 51 to 49 against advancing the bill, with 60 votes needed. The vote throws uncertainty into the future of aid for Ukraine and sends lawmakers back to the negotiating table with just days to go until Congress has scheduled winter break.

Every single Republican Senator voted against the measure, along with independent Senator Bernie Sanders, who had earlier in the day expressed reservations that the legislation included billions in military aid for Israel.

“I do not believe we should be appropriating over $10 billion for the right-wing extremist Netanyahu government to continue its current military approach,” Mr Sanders said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing campaign in the Gaza strip, which has so far killed thousands of civilians.

Mr Sanders, who is a long-time critic of Mr Netanyahu, added: “What the Netanyahu government is doing is immoral, it is in violation of international law, and the United States should not be complicit in those actions.”

Earlier on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden said he was “willing to make significant compromises on the border” in order to get the aid bill passed.

“This cannot wait,” he said, adding that “Republicans in Congress are willing to give Putin the greatest gift he could hope for”.

Also on Wednesday, the Biden administration announced $175m in new security assistance for Ukraine from the supply of funding that has already been approved. The package includes ammunition, including missiles and artillery shells, as well as “equipment to protect critical national infrastructure”, the US Department of Defense said in a news release.

Concerns over the future of the $110bn package grew on Tuesday after a classified briefing for lawmakers aimed at shoring up support for new funds broke down spectacularly.

Senators shouted at each other over border security and least a dozen Republicans walked out.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also cancelled a virtual briefing with lawmakers over a “last-minute matter”, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday, without providing further detail.

Mood dims in Kyiv as US stand-off imperils war effort

The package already includes provisions for border security, but Republican demands for additional changes to asylum rules has complicated negotiations with Democrats. While the party’s members are overwhelmingly in favour of aid to Ukraine, some have sought to use the issue as a way address mounting domestic concerns over the US southern border.

Ahead of the failed vote to bring the package to the floor, Mr Schumer delivered an emotional plea to his colleagues on the Senate floor, telling them that the vote was an important “moment in history” and that they should “rush to the defence of democracy” in Ukraine.

“You can be sure that Vladimir Putin is watching closely,” he said.

Source: BBC