Putin Will Likely Be Reelected, Kremlin Says Ukraine Regions Will Vote For Him: Report

The Kremlin believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin will likely be reelected in 2024 despite the raging war in Ukraine, according to a report.

Putin's office held a discussion last week about the Russian president's prospects for the upcoming Russian presidential election to be held on March 17, 2024, Russian Kremlin-aligned news outlet RBK reported, citing three unnamed sources familiar with the content of the meeting.

Sergey Kiriyenko, the first deputy head of the Russian Presidential Administration, gathered members of the Kremlin's external political bloc to discuss the tasks related to the 2024 election, according to RBK's sources.

During the discussion, the Kremlin officials were tasked to maintain Putin's "high level of support" and consolidate the Russian people to reelect the Russian leader, the sources said.

Kremlin officials were also ordered to make sure next year's election would be better than the 2018 election in terms of support and voter turnout, according to the report.

For the 2018 Russian presidential race, the Kremlin was reportedly ordered to gather 70% of the votes for Putin with the same voter turnout. Putin actually received 76.7% of the votes (around 56.4 million votes), with a voter turnout of 67.5%.

The Kremlin is also banking on the "support" of the Ukrainian regions annexed by Russia during the ongoing war, specifically Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, sources told RBK.

During the discussion, Kremlin officials reportedly noted that the number of Russian voters had increased following the annexation. They reportedly also claimed that support for Putin in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian regions is high and believed that the people who allegedly voted to join Russia are likely to vote for Putin in 2024.

Putin's participation in the campaign was reportedly also discussed by Kremlin officials, though the Russian president has yet to announce whether he intends to participate in the 2024 presidential race.

Last month, Putin said Russia's local elections later this year as well as the 2024 presidential election would be conducted under "strict compliance with the law [and] consistent with all democratic constitutional process."

Putin said Russians' rights and freedom would not be waived despite the war in Ukraine and the West's sanctions against their country.

However, a political analyst warned that the situation on the Ukrainian battlefield could threaten Putin's reelection ambitions.

"The 2024 campaign differs from all the previous ones in that it won't be held under servile conditions, and by the time it begins, things could change dramatically," political analyst Vladimir Shemyakin told the Moscow Times.

Putin was first elected as Russian president in 2000 and reelected in 2004.

Putin became Russia's prime minister in 2008 after being constitutionally barred from running for a third consecutive term.

In 2012, he ran again for Russia's highest office and won. This time, Putin served for a six-year term after former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a law extending a presidential term from four years to six years.

Putin was reelected for a fourth term as president in March 2018. In 2021, he signed a law amending the Russian Constitution, allowing him to run for two more six-year presidential terms.