Vladimir Putin drops a cryptic hint about quitting Russian Presidency in 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a marathon conference in Moscow where he dropped a hint about his political future post-2024. Some analysts observed Putin might not continue after 2024 when he indicated that he was in favour of removing the word ‘successive’ from tenure length.

As per the Russian Constitution, a president can stay for six years with one successive re-election, which makes it 12 years at stretch. In 2008, Putin handed over the presidency to his ally Dmitry Medvedev and returned to the helm in 2012. Speculations were rife that the Russian President might use the same tactic to return to power, but Putin’s hint said otherwise.

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'Constitutional right to return'

At the annual conference, Putin said that he had served two successive terms and had the constitutional right to return to the post of the president, but this could be “possibly” removed due to objections from political scientists and activists. He also answered the issue revolving Trump’s impeachment and said that it is a continuation of internal political struggle. Putin added that the party that lost the 2016 election is trying to achieve results by “other means”.

Putin compared the impeachment with the earlier probe of Russian interference in US elections and called it groundless. “Now they invented some sort of pressure on Ukraine,” said the president, referring to the allegations of Trump pressurising Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate Joe Biden, a Democrat and Trump’s potential challenger for 2020 presidential elections.

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During the conference, Putin also called the four-year ban handed over to Russia by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) as unfair and politically motivated. He signalled that Russia will appeal against the ban as the Russian anti-doping agency’s supervisory board voted to file a petition with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland. There are speculations that the case could be sent within the next two weeks after the decision gets approved by another panel of Russian sports and anti-doping agency.

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(With Inputs from Agencies)