MOSCOW, January 22. /TASS/. Members of Vladimir Putin’s election campaign headquarters staff have submitted enough voter signatures to the Central Election Commission (CEC) for registering the incumbent Russian leader as an official candidate in Russia’s presidential election voting on March 15-17, according to a TASS reporter.

Russian election law requires that independent candidates gather between 300,000 to 315,000 signatures for registration purposes to be placed on the ballot. As many as 95 boxes of signatures were delivered to the CEC by 15 election HQ volunteers. Therefore, Putin has become the first declared presidential candidate to submit his or her voter signatures, breaking ahead of the other seven candidates.

Earlier, Putin’s election campaigners said that more than 2.5 mln signatures had been gathered across all 89 Russian regions, or eight times as many as legally required.

This year’s figure is also higher than the more than 1.6 mln voter signatures gathered in support of Putin’s previous presidential run in Russia’s 2018 election for chief executive, when the country had just 85 regions.

To date, the CEC has registered three candidates nominated by parliamentary parties: Leonid Slutsky of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR); Vladislav Davankov of New People; and Nikolay Kharitonov of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF).

Russia will hold its presidential election on March 17 with voting taking place over three days on March 15-17.