Experts: Viktor Bout’s participation in the LDPR presidential election is unlikely

The participation of businessman Viktor Bout, released in December from an American prison, in the 2024 presidential election as an LDPR candidate is unlikely, said Dmitry Orlov, director general of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications.

Booth entered in the Liberal Democratic Party on December 12 during a rally of liberal democrats timed to coincide with the 33rd anniversary of the party. The party card was handed to him by its chairman, Leonid Slutsky. The entrepreneur said at the rally that he was not going to nominate his candidacy in the elections. Elections of the President of Russia are scheduled for 2024, and for the State Duma in 2026.

Bout now has low recognition, it is necessary to additionally tell the voter about him, Orlov noted. “He has a ‘heroic’ image, but it is situational, it matters only to a part of the voters, and by 2024 it will undoubtedly fade,” he said.

According to Orlov, there are other strong “figures” in the LDPR: in addition to Slutsky, these are the chairman of the State Duma Labor Committee Yaroslav Nilov, the governors of the Khabarovsk Territory and the Smolensk Region Mikhail Degtyarev and Alexei Ostrovsky.

Bout’s admission to the LDPR is very similar to a “situational story”, an attempt to draw attention to the all-Russian party rally, believes the former head of the presidential department for domestic policy, political scientist Konstantin Kostin. He also considers the nomination of a businessman in 2024 as not the most likely scenario.

For the Liberal Democratic Party, the participation of their candidate in the presidential election is an opportunity to solve two problems: “to fix the existing leadership structure” and reboot it into something close to the political style of Zhirinovsky, which traditional party voters have a request for, the expert says.

“So far, it seems that neither Bout, nor Slutsky, nor any of the other prominent party functionaries can solve this problem. So in this logic, a good “game plan” is not visible, ”said Kostin.

Slutsky is not as famous as the founder of the party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who died in April 2022, which is why he needs new politicians in the ranks of the party, political scientist Alexei Makarkin explained to Vedomosti.

The LDPR remains committed to “people with a power background”, they help the party attract its electorate, said Yevgeny Minchenko, president of the Minchenko Consulting communications holding. Bout, as a new politician, has high recognition, but “very weak content, the expert believes.

The LDPR participated in the presidential elections in Russia seven times. Zhirinovsky represented the party six times – in 1991, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012 and 2018.

In his first elections, he took third place, receiving 7.8% of the vote, but he could repeat this success only once – in 2008, when he showed an absolutely best result for himself (9.35%) and lost to the then successor of Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev , who went to the polls from the post of First Deputy Prime Minister, as well as the communist Gennady Zyuganov.

Only once, in 2004, instead of Zhirinovsky, Vladimir Putin competed with State Duma deputy Oleg Malyshkin, who began his career in the party as head of security. He received 2.02% of the popular vote. However, it was not Zyuganov who was nominated from the communists at that time, but another, at that time less well-known candidate – Nikolai Kharitonov.

In 2018, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation nominated another candidate instead of Zyuganov, Pavel Grudinin, he lost the election to Putin, taking second place.

The LDPR spokesman declined to comment on the possibility of Bout’s presidential nomination.