These brave Russian candidates are running against President Putin

Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak speaks to reporters Feb. 6, 2018, at the National Press Club in Washington DC. Russian President Vladimir Putin is sure to win, but voters need to see that there are other options, Sobchak said.(Photo: Oren Dorell, USA TODAY)

Russian President Vladimir Putin is all but assured to win re-election in this month's vote. But who are the people who dare run against him?

One candidate is a former reality television star recently doused with water during a TV debate. Another ran on a presidential platform in the 1990s of Russian men getting cheaper vodka and women having better lingerie. And a third has received death threats for his criticism of Russia's aggressive foreign policy. 

Ksenia Sobchak

Russian presidential candidate Ksenia Sobchak speaks to reporters Feb. 6, 2018, at the National Press Club in Washington DC. Russian President Vladimir Putin is sure to win, but voters need to see that there are other options, Sobchak said. (Photo: Oren Dorell, USA TODAY)

The former journalist accused Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of holding on to power for almost two decades to benefit their business associates.

"I’m not afraid of Putin so I go and challenge him in the election," Sobchak said, adding that she named her campaign "No Fear" for a reason.

The 36-year-old liberal candidate from St. Petersburg was once a presenter and head judge on Russia's version of America's Next Top Model. During a visit to Washington last month  Sobchak said she is running to show Russians they have a choice other than Putin. She is supported by 1.6% of voters.

Sobchak has called for Russian cooperation with the United States, NATO and the European Union. During an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., she implored Russians to reject corruption and treat the Crimea Peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014 as a Ukrainian territory.

On Sunday, she was doused with water and knocked to the ground for a confronting candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky during a recent televised debate, the Associated Press reports. Her assailant was a staff member of the Moscow city council, her campaign said.

The political opposition in Russia is suppressed under Putin and does not have free access to major media outlets "because they all belong to the state," Sobchak said. "The only way to be heard is to go to the presidential campaign."

These are the other candidates as they appear on the ballot:

Russian presidential candidate Sergei Baburin speaks during a meeting at the Russian Central Election Commission headquarters in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 7, 2018. Sergei Baburin, Baburin is a nationalist lawmaker and legal expert who opposed the breakup of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and became one of the leaders of a rebellion in parliament against President Boris Yeltsin in 1993. (Photo: YURI KOCHETKOV, EPA-EFE)

Sergei Baburin

A candidate of the Russian All-People's Union, Baburin, 59, proposed in 2007 that the government pay each Russian citizen $150,000 as compensation for privatizing formerly state-owned enterprises after the fall of the Soviet Union. He now supports a return to Soviet-style social programs.

He wants to strength Russia's grip on Crimea through economic development. Baburin also advocates expanding Russia’s role in an economic system with countries like Brazil, India and China that would be independent of U.S. and European sanctions and influence. Baburin has 0.3% support of voters.

Presidential candidate of the Russian Communist Party Pavel Grudinin, left, and Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, right, attend a rally marking the 'Day of the Fatherland Defender' in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 23, 2018. (Photo: YURI KOCHETKOV, EPA-EFE)

 

Pavel Grudinin 

Grudinin, 57, owns a majority stake in the Lenin State Farm, a cooperative near Moscow. The industrial farm is Russia's largest strawberry producer and a rare remnant of the 27,000 state-owned collectives established during the Soviet era. Grudinin describes the socialist model as an antidote to corruption in modern Russia.

The Communist Party candidate ridicules Putin’s reliance on “people everyone knows should’ve been in prison long ago,” according to the Washington Post.

Grudinin told The Christian Science Monitor in September that unlike many of Russia's top business leaders, his company's executives do not send profits abroad or steal them. Instead they make investments in their employees’ schools, kindergartens and a medical clinic. Grudinin has 7.8% support of voters, according to Kremlin news agency Tass.

Ultra-conservative politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and presidential candidate, gestures as he visits a food market in Moscow on Jan. 16, 2017. Russia's presidential election is scheduled for March 18, 2018. (Photo: YURI KADOBNOV, AFP/Getty Images)

 

Vladimir Zhirinovsky  

Zhirinovsky, 71, has had some bizarre views during a 29-year political career. When running for the presidency in 1993, he pledged Russian men would get cheaper vodka, Russian women would get better underwear and the nation would rebuild its empire.

He vowed to create a dictatorship and reduce crime through summary executions, as well as expand Russia’s borders to include Alaska and Finland, and to blow radioactive waste into the Baltic states, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

In 2002, he's made coarse statements attacking former U.S. president George W. Bush, his National Intelligence Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and women in general. Last week, he called Sobchak “a whore” after she doused him with water during a challengers’ debate that broadcast Feb. 28. The nationalist who represents the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia is supported by 5.9% of voters.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, poses for a photo with Russian Women's Olympic Figure Skating Gold medalist Alina Zagitova, left, and silver medalist Evgenia Medvedeva, after an awards ceremony at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 28, 2018. (Photo: Grigory Dukor, AP)

Vladimir Putin

Putin 65, is running for his fourth term. As a KGB spy during the Soviet era, Putin maintained ties to organized crime, according to Karen Dawisha, author of Putin's Kleptocracy; Who Owns Russia? As Russia's president and leader since 2000, he's become one of the wealthiest men in the world, with an estimated net worth of tens of billions of dollars, according to U.S. intelligence. 

Putin, an economist with a judo blackbelt, cultivated a tough-guy image with shirtless horseback riding, helping to treat a tranquilized tiger and a polar bear, and flying in an ultralight with migratory birds. Many of his critics and political opponents have died in mysterious circumstances.

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After his first two four-year terms as president, Putin was appointed prime minister in 2008, and then returned as president in 2012. The length of the presidential terms were then changed from four years to six.

Putin recently boasted about his new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and other nuclear weapons under development.

An independent, he is supported by 69.5% of voters, according to Tass.

Maxim Suraikin, leader of the Communists of Russia political party and the party's nominee as a candidate for the 2018 Russian presidential election, shows his presidential candidate ID at the Russian Central Election Commission headquarters in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 8, 2018. (Photo: YURI KOCHETKOV, EPA-EFE)

Maxim Suraikin

The leader of the little-known Communists of Russia party, Suraikin, 39, has called for a defense alliance styled on the Soviet-era Warsaw Pact. He wants to raise the minimum wage and pensions, according to the Moscow Times. He was trained as an engineer, ran a small computer company, and ran for governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region in 2014, winning 2% of the vote, the AP reported.

Suraikin is supported by 0.1% of Russian voters, according to Tass.

Russian businessman and politician Boris Titov, right, nominated by the Party of Growth as a candidate for the 2018 Russian presidential election, delivers boxes containing signatures in support of his candidacy to the Russian Central Electoral Commission in Moscow, Russia, Jan. 30, 2018. (Photo: MAXIM SHIPENKOV, EPA-EFE)

Boris Titov

Titov, 57, told The Spectator he doesn’t expect to win, but hopes to use his candidacy to press Putin for better economic policies. He's the chairman of the pro-business Party for Growth, which focused on protecting the right of Russia's growing middle class, according to Sputnik.

As the Russian government's Presidential Commissioner for Entrepreneurs' Rights, Titov has been working to repatriate Russian businessmen who were accused of crimes in Russia and fled to Britain to avoid prosecution. He has asked Putin about allowing four of 16 people on the "London list" to return after they pay a "compensation" to the government. On Tuesday, he said more people have asked to be added to the list, Tass reported.

Titov wants government to be more efficient. He seeks to eliminate regulations and unnecessary inspections that present opportunities for bribes. And he wants an economic stimulus with huge government spending.

Titov is supported by 0.3% of voters, according to Tass.

Russian presidential candidate Grigory Yavlinsky lays flowers in central Moscow on Feb. 27, 2018, at the site where late opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was fatally shot on a bridge near the Kremlin. A march in memory of Kremlin critic Nemtsov gathered several thousand Muscovites on Feb. 25, in a rare sanctioned opposition gathering ahead of the vote in March. (Photo: VASILY MAXIMOV, AFP/Getty Images)

Grigory Yavlinsky

A liberal economist and former prime minister from the Yabloko Party, Yavlinsky is considered a true opposition candidate. He has opposed Russia’s annexation of Crimea, getting death threats from nationalists who call him a traitor, according to the Times of Israel. 

Yavlinsky, 65 has called the election a carnival show and “electoral Halloween” because of the cast of characters running. He wants an honest government, where the president's favorite billionaires no longer enjoy favoritism in the media, access to economic spoils and legal immunity. 

He is supported by 0.9% of voters.

 

 

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