MOSCOW, Dec 6 — Russia’s Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, will vote tomorrow on a proposal to hold the next presidential election on March 17, a senior lawmaker said.

"The issue will be submitted to the next plenary session of the Federation Council on December 7, 2023,” Andrei Klishas, the head of the house’s committee on constitutional legislation, said in his Telegram channel.

The announcement of the election date is a formality, but it will clear the way for an expected announcement soon by President Vladimir Putin that he will run for another six-year term.

Putin, 71, has been in power as president or prime minister since the last day of 1999, when Boris Yeltsin stepped down and made him acting president.

He has no serious rival to challenge him in the election. Russia’s best known opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, is serving sentences totalling more than 30 years in a penal colony.

If he completes another six-year term in the Kremlin, Putin will overtake Josef Stalin — who led the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1953 — and become the longest-serving leader of Russia since Empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century. — Reuters