Vladimir Putin will be Russia's only ‘independent’ presidential candidate in 2018

The deadline has passed for submitting signatures endorsing a presidential candidate’s place on the ballot, and Russia’s Central Elections Commission is now reviewing paperwork from six people. Five of these applicants are running as candidates from registered political parties, meaning they needed to collect 100,000 endorsements. The only independent candidate is the man who will likely win the race handily: Vladimir Putin, who needed to submit 300,000 signatures, though his team collected almost double that number. Election officials have 10 days to review the endorsements.

The voters’ rights group “Golos” says the signatures-collection process was unfair because Vladimir Putin was allowed to collect endorsements in more places than any of the other candidates.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Pavel Grudinin, representing LDPR and KPRF, respectively, didn’t need to submit signatures to get a place on the March 18 presidential ballot because these political parties are represented in the State Duma.

Who are the folks who submitted signatures? 

Sergey Baburin (Russian All-People's Union), Maxim Suraikin (Communists of Russia), Boris Titov (Party of Growth), Grigory Yavlinsky (Yabloko), Ksenia Sobchak (Civil Initiative), and a little-known independent politician named Vladimir Putin.