Presidential elections were held in Russia from 15 to 17 March 2024. It was the eighth presidential election in the country. The incumbent president Vladimir Putin won with 88% of the vote, the highest percentage in a presidential election in post-Soviet Russia, gaining a fifth term in what was widely viewed as a foregone conclusion. He was inaugurated on 7 May 2024.
In November 2023, Boris Nadezhdin, a former member of the State Duma, became the first person backed by a registered political party to announce his candidacy, running on an anti-war platform. He was followed by incumbent and independent candidate Vladimir Putin in December 2023, who was eligible to seek re-election as a result of the 2020 constitutional amendments. Later the same month, Leonid Slutsky of the Liberal Democratic Party, Nikolay Kharitonov of the Communist Party and Vladislav Davankov of New People announced their candidacies.
Other candidates also declared their candidacy but were barred for various reasons by the Central Election Commission (CEC). As was the case in the 2018 presidential election, the most prominent opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was barred from running due to a prior criminal conviction seen as politically motivated. Navalny died in prison in February 2024, weeks before the election, under suspicious circumstances. Nadezhdin, despite passing the initial stages of the process, on 8 February 2024, was also barred from running. The decision was announced at a special CEC session, citing alleged irregularities in the signatures of voters supporting his candidacy. Nadezhdin's status as the only explicitly anti-war candidate was widely regarded as the real reason for his disqualification, although Davankov promised "peace and negotiations on our own terms". As a result, Putin faced no credible opposition. Anti-Putin activists called on voters to spoil their ballot. The elections saw 1.4 million invalid or blank ballots cast, around 1.6% of all votes cast, a 45 percent increase compared to the 2018 elections.
Most international observers did not expect the election to be either free or fair, with Putin having increased political repressions after launching his full-scale war with Ukraine in 2022. The elections were also held in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine. There were reports of irregularities, including ballot stuffing and coercion, with statistical analysis suggesting unprecedented levels of fraud in the 2024 elections.
Eligibility.
According to clause 3 of article 81 of the Constitution of Russia, prior to the 2020 constitutional revision, the same person could not hold the position of President of the Russian Federation for more than two consecutive terms, which allowed Vladimir Putin to become president in 2012 for a third term not consecutive with his prior terms. The constitutional reform established a hard limit of two terms overall. However, terms served before the constitutional revision do not count, which gives Putin eligibility for two more presidential terms until 2036.
According to the new version of the Constitution, presidential candidates must:
Candidates.
The individuals below appeared on the ballot.
Rejected candidates.
Individuals in this section have had their document submissions accepted by the CEC to register their participation, and later gathered the necessary signatures from voters. The deadline to submit documents was 27 December 2023 for independents and 1 January 2024 for party-based nominations, with the commission already announcing the rejection of some candidates based on alleged issues with their paperwork.
Towards the deadline to submit documents, the CEC stated that 33 potential candidates were intending to be registered as candidates (24 independents and 9 party-based nominations). The commission accepted the documents of 15 candidates.
The next step was to collect signatures by 31 January 2024. Independents had to gather 300,000 signatures from the public in at least 40 of Russia's federal subjects to support their participation and thereby be included on the ballot, while potential candidates nominated by political parties that are not represented in the State Duma or in at least a third of the country's regional parliaments had to gather 100,000 signatures.
Vladimir Putin was the first to achieve this, having gathered more than half a million signatures by 30 December; by 17 January he had gathered 2.5 million signatures. He was followed by Davankov, Kharitonov, Slutsky, Nadezhdin and Malinkovich (in no particular order). Others either failed to achieve this or withdrew from the process.
The CEC accepted the signatures of Putin, while rejecting Nadezhdin and Malinkovich on the basis of what it described to be irregularities. Davankov, Kharitonov and Slutsky were not required to collect signatures as they were nominated by political parties represented in the State Duma. This confirmed the final number of candidates at four.
Party congresses and primaries.
Congresses of political parties are held after the official appointment of election. At the congress, a party can either nominate its own candidate, or support a candidate nominated by another party or an independent candidate. Twelve parties held party congresses in December 2023, at which candidates were either nominated or endorsed.
Other parties.
At Yabloko's congress, which took place on 9 December 2023, somewhat unconventionally, the party decided that Grigory Yavlinsky would run for president as its nominee if he obtains 10 million signatures from potential voters, which is higher than the total number of votes Yavlinsky obtained during his most successful run for president (5.55 million). Yabloko later stated that it would not be nominating any candidate. Furthermore, Yavlinsky only managed to gather around a million signatures.
The Left Front stated that it would run a primary election between 22 candidates, but later announced it would not be holding the primary due to threats received from the police. Instead, the party called on their "comrades in the Communist Party" to vote for one of the following to be nominated at the party congress: Pavel Grudinin, Nikolai Bondarenko, Valentin Konovalov, Andrey Klychkov, Sergey Levchenko, Nina Ostanina, Igor Girkin.
Preparation of public opinion.
In June 2023, a few posters advocating for Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner Group private military company, were noticed in Krasnodar, with a QR code to a website hinting at the 2024 election. Prigozhin himself denied any relation to such posters and "any political activity in the internet", but fuelled speculation that he was about to go into politics after holding press conferences across Russia and leading the Wagner Group rebellion. He died in a plane crash later that year. 
According to an investigation published in February 2024 by a coalition of journals including VSquare, Delfi, Expressen and Paper Trail Media, Putin ordered Decree Number 2016, titled "On deputy heads responsible for social and political work of federal government agencies", on 17 February 2023. The decree stated its aim of coordination between the Ministry of Education and Science and other state agencies to "increase the number of voters and the support of the main candidates" in the 2024 presidential election and other elections. Documents from a governmental "non-profit organisation", ANO Integration, highlighted the emphasis on increasing the number of voters and the support of the main candidates, with turnout being used to indicate the scale of support and opposition to Putin.
The ANO Integration documents presented a plan to create lists of all employees and sub-lists of opinion leaders in institutions within the ministry's responsibility, and to monitor political attitudes and voting preferences and "increas[e] [the employee's] level of socio-political literacy". The documents planned for the preparation of secret instructions for social events in which selected opinion leaders and "experts" would meet with students and teachers in preparation for the election. Martin Kragh of the Center for East European Studies in Stockholm described the documents by stating, "All these documents show how little the Kremlin believes that people might just spontaneously support the ruling party". Mark Galeotti, a British historian, lecturer and writer, described the process as "pre-rigging" the election in order to minimise the amount of manipulation needed in the numbers of votes cast for Putin in the election. He stated, "The Kremlin cannot even trust what mayors and governors tell them about the [political] situation in their region."
When asked by a BBC journalist about his electoral campaign, Nikolay Kharitonov refused to answer why he thought he would be a better candidate than Putin, before proceeding to praise the latter for "trying to solve a lot of the problems of the 1990s" and consolidating the country for "victory in all areas". Shortly after filing his candidacy in December 2023, Leonid Slutsky said he did not "dream of beating Putin" and predicted that the latter would achieve "a huge victory". Vladislav Davankov said he would not criticize his political opponents.
Conduct.
Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine.
Early voting opened on 26 February and lasted until 14 March to allow certain residents in remote areas in 37 federal subjects of Russia as well as in the regions of Ukraine that it annexed following its invasion in 2022 to vote. In the latter areas, a campaign called InformUIK was set up to encourage participation in the election, with its representatives going door-to-door escorted by armed men to compile voter lists and collect ballots from residences. A resident of Kherson Oblast described the elections in his area as a "comedy show", noting that households were being visited by "two locals – one holding a list of voters and the other a ballot box – and a military man with a machine gun".
Russian officials also used home visits by the mobile polling stations to monitor the population and find those participating in resistance activities or refusing to obtain Russian government documents. Reports also emerged of Russian-installed authorities coercing people to vote by withholding social benefits and healthcare treatment, while human rights activists said at least 27 Ukrainians were arrested for refusing to vote in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts. Despite Russian electoral laws prohibiting those without Russian passports from voting, voters in occupied Ukraine were allowed to present any valid identification documents, including a Ukrainian passport or driving license. In Melitopol, Zaporizhzhia Oblast, soldiers armed with machine guns sealed off apartments being visited by mobile polling teams. In one instance, a man who fled his village near Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast, to Ukrainian-controlled territory following the Russian invasion alleged that his name appeared in Russian-produced voter lists and was listed as having voted for Putin by election officials.
Efforts to promote turnout.
On the eve of the first round of regular voting on 14 March, Putin called on citizens to vote in order to show their unity behind his leadership, saying in a video message that "We have already shown that we can be together, defending the freedom, sovereignty and security of Russia," and urged them "not to stray from this path".
Latvia-based Russian news outlet "Meduza" reported that Kremlin officials asked Russia's regional governments to secure 70% voter turnout and more than 80% support for Putin.
Civil servants and employees at state-run companies were ordered to vote. In Omsk, officials issued 50,000 free tickets at polling stations to first-time voters aged between 18 and 24 years of age for one Ferris wheel ride at an amusement park. In Altai Krai, voters were to be given a chance to win sanctioned goods and appliances such as an iPhone in a raffle, provided that they upload pictures on VKontakte showing them at polling stations. In Strezhevoy, Tomsk Oblast, the mayor promised free bread rolls and porridge to voters. In Sverdlovsk Oblast, authorities set up an election day trivia quiz about the region's history with and offered 2,000 smartphones, 45 apartments, 20 motorcycles, and 100 Moskvich cars as prizes, but said that correct answers would not guarantee a win. In Tatarstan, officials set a music festival in Kazan on 17 March that would be open to visitors upon presentation of a bracelet obtained at polling stations that would also guarantee free and unlimited access to public transportation, along with a chance to win in a raffle with three Lada Vesta cars at stake.
Reports also emerged of pressure being exerted by authorities on students and young people to vote. Students at a construction college in Perm Krai were ordered to vote inside the campus, with the school administration pledging to monitor turnout using video surveillance cameras. At Tula State Pedagogical University, students were required to submit a photo of their ballot to prove that they voted. Its rector had also publicly endorsed Putin. At Voronezh State Pedagogical University, students said they were required to inform authorities about who they were voting for.
Regular voting.
On the regular election days, polls opened at 08:00 local time in Kamchatka Krai on 15 March and are