Putin’s rival BANNED from presidential elections

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny is ineligible to run because of a past criminal conviction for corruption, the Central Election Commission said. 

Mr Navalny, 41, has always maintained his conviction, and a five-year suspended sentence handed down by a court, was “politically-motivated”. 

But despite his protests, the election commission today voted unanimously to bar him from running.

A 13th member of the panel abstained over a possible conflict of interest. 

Mr Navalny has been jailed three times this year and charged with breaking the law by repeatedly organising public meetings and rallies.

However he has insisted he is being blocked from running to prevent him “speaking the truth” about the situation in Russia.

Reacting to the decision today, he said: “Only Putin and the candidates that he personally chose, ones who don’t pose the slightest threat to him, are taking part [in the vote].”

The opposition leader had just yesterday been formally nominated to run for president next year.

The former lawyer came to prominence in 2009 after he published a series of corruption investigations which put some of Russia’s largest state-owned companies under the microscope.

In the only formal election he has stood in, Mr Navalny received nearly 30 per cent of the vote in the 2013 race to become mayor of Moscow.

Mr Navalny was first sentenced in 2013 after being accused of embezzling timber worth 16million roubles (£330,000) from the Kirovles state timber company while working as an adviser to Kirov’s governor.

This verdict was quashed by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which found he was not given a fair hearing.

However a retrial earlier this year gave him the exact same sentence.

Recent polls suggest Mr Putin, who is enjoying a huge approval rating, is on track to win a comfortable relation in March’s ballot.

If he wins a fourth term next year, he could remain in power until 2024, making him the longest-serving leader since Joseph Stalin.

Mr Putin has served as both prime minister and president for more than 18 years.