Putin sends message to world with 'spontaneous' election announcement Russia's paramount leader, Vladimir Putin, was not even looking at the television camera when he announced that he would aim to stay in the Kremlin for at least another six years as head of the world's biggest nuclear power.
After pinning the gold star "Hero of Russia" medals on the lapels of soldiers who had fought in Ukraine, some of the men and mothers of the fallen rushed up to one of the best-guarded leaders in the world in the Grand Kremlin Palace.
Artyom Zhoga, a lieutenant colonel born in Soviet-era Ukraine who fights for Russia, asked Putin to run again: "You are our president, we are your team. We need you. Russia needs you."
Putin thanked him.
"I will not hide that I have had different thoughts at different times but it is now time to make a decision. I will run for the post of president," Putin said, his muffled words picked up by a microphone nearby and his back to the camera.
Others, including Sapizhat Mazayeva, mother of a fallen soldier decorated as a hero of Russia, told the 71-year-old president and ex-KGB spy that his work needed to be continued.
The setting of Putin's announcement, surrounded by decorated soldiers and mothers of fallen soldiers, may be an indication of how he perceives his rule, and some Kremlin watchers said it could give hints about the future of the Ukraine war.
"Putin is going to the polls as a military leader of a country at war," said Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser.
"This is exactly what the choice of the place of Putin's statement says: at the request of officers, heroes of Russia, heroes of the war in Donbas."
Markov said the very fact of agreeing to run at the request of Zhoga, who was born in Donetsk and whose Sparta Battalion fought alongside Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine ahead of the 2022 invasion, indicated that Putin wanted to seize all of the Donbas region.....................
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-sends-message-world-with-spontaneous-election-announcement-2023-12-08/
