MOSCOW, January 30. /TASS/. More than 3.5 mln voter signatures were gathered nationwide in support of incumbent Russian President Vladimir Putin’s self-nomination for re-election, Andrey Turchak, secretary of the United Russia party’s General Council and first deputy speaker of the Federation Council (upper house of parliament), said.

"Over 25,000 signature collectors gathered more than 3.5 million signatures. I would like to point out that United Russia was the main contributor to this achievement. Our fellow party members collected almost 2.1 mln signatures," Turchak pointed out.

He specified that the top three regions for collected signatures included Kemerovo (over 74,000 signatures), Chuvash (64,000) and Bashkortostan (58,500).

The Federation Council formally designated March 17, 2024, as the date of Russia’s presidential election. The Central Election Commission decided that the vote would take place over three days, on March 15-17, 2024, making it the first ever three-day presidential election in Russian history.

As a self-nominee, Putin needed to collect at least 300,000 voter signatures in his support. His campaign team handed 315,000 signatures over to the Central Election Commission on January 22. The election authority formally registered Putin as a presidential candidate on January 29.