Putin’s Play to Stay in Power Approved by Constitutional Court

(Bloomberg) -- Russia's Constitutional Court approved amendments that could extend President Vladimir Putin's rule for an additional 12 years beyond the end of his term in 2024.

The judges issued a 52-page ruling Monday in St. Petersburg that recognizes a reset of Putin's term limits signed by the 67-year-old leader as legal, and approved the process to enshrine the constitutional changes via a national vote.

Until last week, Putin had repeatedly ruled out a repeal of presidential term limits, even as he proposed the most significant constitutional overhaul since the document was adopted in 1993 at his Jan. 15 state-of-the-nation address. But by the time he signed the law over the weekend, the changes bore little relation to the original plan and would allow Putin to run for two more terms, opening the way for him to remain president until he is 83.

Putin's condition for the key proposal on term limits, made by Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, to come into effect was that the high court approve it and the people endorse the revised constitution in a national referendum.

However, growing concern over the spread of coronavirus could slow the adoption of the amendments down. The Kremlin is considering delaying the April 22 national vote until June due to the pandemic, according to two people familiar with the discussions, who asked not to be identified because the information was not public. The Meduza news website reported the possibility of a postponement earlier Monday.

Russia announced its biggest single-day increase in coronavirus cases on Monday, and Moscow's authorities soon after canceled all major events until April 10 and will close down public schools from March 21.

Putin sidestepped the constitution's limit on anyone serving more than two consecutive terms in 2008, after his first eight years in office, by installing Dmitry Medvedev as president and spending four years as prime minister. During that time, Medvedev revised the constitution to extend the presidential term to six years.

--With assistance from Stepan Kravchenko.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jake Rudnitsky in Moscow at jrudnitsky@bloomberg.net;Evgenia Pismennaya in Moscow at epismennaya@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Torrey Clark at tclark8@bloomberg.net, Tony Halpin