Russian president Vladimir Putin on Friday told soldiers who had fought in the Ukraine war that he would run for president again in the 2024 election, a move that will allow the former KGB spy to stay in power until at least 2030.

Putin, who was handed the presidency by Boris Yeltsin on the last day of 1999, has already served as president for longer than any other ruler of Russia since Josef Stalin, beating even Leonid Brezhnev’s 18-year tenure. …

“I will not hide that I have had different thoughts at different times but it is now time to make a decision,” Putin told Zhoga and the other decorated soldiers. “I understand that there is no other way.”

“I will run for the post of president,” Putin was shown in television footage saying in the gilded Georgievsky Hall, part of the Grand Kremlin Palace.

[Election, eh? Suuuuure, tovarisch. Who wants to run against him? Alexei Navalny can use a cellmate. — Ed]