Vladimir Putin has formalized his candidacy for the 2018 Russian presidential elections, reports the Russian agency Interfax. Putin decided to announce his candidacy during a speech to workers at a car factory in Nizhny Novgorod. For Putin, the incoming mandate would be yet another mandate, practically without a solution of continuity if one also counts the premiership (alternating with Medvedev): he has been in power, as premier or president, since 2000, and if he is re-elected he will remain in office until 2024.
In the same circumstance the Russian president also commented the disqualification of his country's sports federation for the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics: “Russia is partly to blame but this has been dishonestly exploited to apply the principle of collective responsibility. In the first place, however, I must immediately say that it is partly our fault because we have created a pretext for the disqualification. But I also believe that that pretext has not been used in the fairest possible way. No legal system anywhere in the world establishes collective responsibility,” she said.
