Russian President Vladimir Putin will have no rival to stand against him if he decides to run again in next year’s presidential election, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday, as quoted by Reuters and Interfax.

“The president has not yet announced that he will submit his candidacy. If we proceed from the fact that the president nominates his candidacy, then obviously no one in our country can really compete with the president at the moment,” Peskov said in an interview with the Russian financial channel RBC.

“He enjoys the absolute support of the population. This is a great opportunity and a great responsibility,” Peskov added regarding his boss.

According to the Kremlin spokesman, the regional elections, which ended on Sunday, “most vividly confirmed the absolute consolidation of society around the country’s leadership.”

“The level of support received by the current heads of regions suggests that the president also enjoys this support. The vast majority of them were those governors who received the support of the president,” said Dmytro Peskov.

Both Ukraine and the international community strongly condemned the elections, given that the voting was also organized in Ukrainian territories occupied by Moscow.

Putin was inaugurated as president in 1999, on the last day of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, and has dominated Russian politics ever since. A referendum on amending the Russian Constitution in 2020 allows Putin to remain president until 2036.

Who would run against Vladimir Putin in the presidential elections in Russia

Investigative website Meduza, citing sources close to the Putin administration, noted at the end of August that the Kremlin had already begun looking for candidates to compete with the Russian president without creating real problems for him in the elections.

Two sources close to the presidential administration in Moscow, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Meduza website, which has been blocked in Russia since March 2022, that the Kremlin has so far approved Gennady Zyuganov, the “eternal candidate” of the CPRF. Zyuganov will be 79 years old at the time of the presidential elections.

Another “safe” candidate approved by the Kremlin is Leonid Slutsky, head of the LDPR, which, despite its name, is an ultra-nationalist political party. The 55-year-old Slutsky headed the party after the death of its long-time leader Volodymyr Zhirynovsky in April last year.

Despite the fact that Slutsky is less visible than other Russian leaders, such as Dmytro Medvedev or Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of the State Duma is one of the most active supporters of the war in Ukraine.

Both he and Zyuganov are seen by the Kremlin as candidates who will allow Putin to win next year’s election with a large majority.

One of Meduza’s sources explained that the Putin administration does not want a surprise candidate in the election, which is likely to take place after two years of war. But Kremlin political scientists are more concerned about the advanced age of the Russian president, who turns 70 in October.

Opinion polls show Russians say Vladimir Putin’s age is one of the things they dislike most about him, as the Kremlin hopes he will win 80 percent of the vote against a turnout of 70 percent.