MOSCOW (AP) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed a law that potentially allows him to retain power until 2036, a move that formalizes constitutional changes endorsed in a vote last year.
The July 1 constitutional vote included a clause that redefined Putin’s previous term limits, allowing him to run for president twice more. The change was stamped by the Kremlin-controlled legislature and the relevant law signed by Putin was published on Monday on an official legal information portal.
The 68-year-old Russian president, who has been in power for more than two decades – more than any other Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin – said he would later decide whether to run again in 2024, when his current six-year term ends.
He argued that redefining the term count was necessary to keep his lieutenants focused on their work, instead of “casting their eyes in search of possible successors”.
Constitutional amendments also emphasized the primacy of Russian law over international standards, banned same-sex marriages and mentioned “belief in God” as a central value. Almost 78% of voters approved the constitutional amendments during the week-long vote that ended on July 1. The participation was 68%.
After the vote, Russian lawmakers methodically modified national legislation, passing the relevant laws.
The opposition criticized the constitutional vote, arguing that it was tainted by widespread reports of pressure on voters and other irregularities, as well as the lack of transparency and obstacles that prevent independent monitoring.
In the months following the vote, Russia arrested the country’s most prominent opposition figure, Alexei Navalny,
Navalny, 44, was arrested in January on his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from nerve agent poisoning he attributes to the Kremlin. Russian authorities rejected the charge.
In February, Navalny was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for violating the terms of his probation during a convalescence in Germany. The sentence stems from a 2014 conviction for embezzlement that Navalny rejected as forged – and which the European Court of Human Rights found to be illegal.
His team said Navalny had lost a substantial amount of weight before he even started a hunger strike on Wednesday to protest the authorities’ failure to provide adequate treatment for his back and leg pains.
Navalny complained about the prison officials’ refusal to give him the proper medicines and to allow his doctor to visit him. He also protested the hourly checks that a guard does on him during the night, saying that they amount to sleep deprivation.
In an Instagram post on Monday, Navalny said that three of the 15 people in his room in the penal colony had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. He noticed that he had a strong cough and a fever of 38.1 Celsius (100.6 Fahrenheit).
Later on Monday, the Izvestia newspaper published a statement from the state prison service saying that Navalny was transferred to the prison colony health unit after a checkup found him with “signs of respiratory illness, including high fever”.
In a bitter note, Navalny said that he and other prisoners studied a warning about tuberculosis prevention that stressed the importance of strengthening immunity with a balanced diet – advice that contrasted with a prison ration of “glue-like oatmeal and frozen potatoes ”.