MOSCOW, December 23. /TASS/. Civil Initiative party holds a congress on Saturday to nominate TV celebrity Ksenia Sobchak a candidate for presidency, the press service of Sobchak’s electoral staff said on Friday.
"Civil Initiative will consider Ksenia Sobchak’s candidacy for participation in the presidential election and will hold voting by ballot on the issue," the report said.
Former Russian Economics Minister Andrei Nechayev said earlier that the party’s political council had supported her nomination.
The congress will be held at Hotel Azimut Olympic on Olimpiyskiy Prospekt Street in Moscow.
Sobchak, the daughter of St Petersburg’s first freely elected mayor Anatoly Sobchak, positions herself as a candidate set off against all other candidates on the ballors and invites everyone who is dissatisfied with other aspirants to presidency to vote for her, as if the ballots had an option saying "against all candidates".
She made public her plans to take part in the election back in October and held talks with a number of pro-democracy parties after that. In the final run, she reached agreement on her nomination with Civil Initiative.
Along with it, Sobchak has said many a time she is prepared to withdraw from the race in favor of Alexei Navalny, a blogger and leader of non-systemic opposition.
She has said on a number of occasions she sizes her electoral chances up as pretty moderate ones but she would like to use the election race for spotlighting openly the problems existing in Russia.
In spite of this, Sobchak says she has come to politics "seriously and for the long haul." She also promises she will not vanish from the political scene after the March 18, 2018, election as she has rolled up her sleeves to change the country’s political system.
She has spent much time recently touring Russia’s regions, holding meetings with volunteers and opening her election staffs.