Putin registered as candidate for Russian president

Russian President Vladimir Putin was registered as an official candidate for the Russian presidential election scheduled for March 18, Russia's Central Elections Commission said Tuesday.

Putin's campaign collected more than 1.6 million signatures from voters. The number of invalid signatures was about 0.39 percent after the approval of the election committee.

Putin will take part in the 2018 election as an independent candidate, APA reported citing TASS, a Russian news agency.
Under Russian electoral law, candidates from non-parliamentary parties must collect signatures of more than 300,000 voters, of whom the number of invalid signatures must not exceed 5 percent.

Five more presidential contenders are awaiting the commission’s decision on registration. They are Grigory Yavlinsky (the Yabloko party), Boris Titov (the Party of Growth), Sergey Baburin (the Russian National Union party), Ksenia Sobchak (the Civil Initiative party) and Maxim Suraikin (the Communists of Russia).Putin registered as candidate for Russian president