MOSCOW, January 17. /TASS/. The election campaign headquarters of incumbent President Vladimir Putin as part of his re-election bid will submit the voter signatures needed for his official candidacy to the Central Election Commission (CEC) next week, Vladimir Mashkov, co-chairman of the headquarters, said.
"On December 23 we started gathering voter signatures and since then, over the past 26 days, we have gathered 2.5 million voter signatures, and even more. This process has been very emotional. The People’s Front and volunteers of the We Are Together [movement] and United Russia [party] are taking part. By the way, yesterday they held a one-day campaign to collect voter signatures and gathered more than one million signatures. So, we are ready to submit all the documents to the Central Election Commission very soon, next week," Mashkov said during Putin’s meeting with his election campaign team.
Mashkov thanked Putin for his decision to run for office "at this challenging, historic moment for Russia and for the entire world," and hailed it as "an act of the will." He said that "many people [come to the headquarters] every day, and they all express their support."
Putin is running for re-election as an independent. He needs 300,000 voter signatories, with no more than 7,500 from each region, to become an official candidate.