Nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky has said billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov and former upper house speaker Sergei Mironov may quit next month’s presidential election.
Prokhorov and Mironov are “dummy candidates,” Zhirinovsky, who is also standing in the March 4 election, said on Thursday. .
“I think they may withdraw their candidacies five days before the election in order to legalize the victory of Vladimir Putin in the first round of voting,” he told a news conference in Moscow.
Putin, Russia’s prime minister, is widely expected to win the vote. However, analysts suggest rising discontent among Russia’s nascent middle class could see him forced into a potentially embarrassing runoff.
Zhirinovsky is the leader of the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and has stood in four previous presidential elections.
Prokhorov, one of Russia’s richest businessmen, is the only independent candidate to run in March’s election. Since entering politics in May last year, he has had to face off allegation that he is a Kremlin project designed to split the opposition.
Mironov, the former speaker of the Federal Council who is now head of the quasi-opposition A Just Russia party, had for a long time been a close Putin ally.
The fifth contender in the March 4 vote is veteran Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov.
