Kseniya Sobchak has announced that she will be running for president of the Russian Federation ahead of the March 2018 elections.  Kesniya is the daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, mentor and former employer of the current Russian president Vladimir Putin throughout his years at the St. Petersburg mayor’s office.

The announcement of her candidacy came as little surprise to those who have been following Russian politics over the last few months, and she was been widely criticised for giving legitimacy to elections that for all intents and purposes more closely resemble a theatre production than the election of the head of state.

Sobchak claimed in a video that officially launched her election campaign that she running as a candidate “against everyone else”, implying that she is running as a protest vote against the typical Kremlin candidates that are wheeled out in order to give elections a feeling of legitimacy.

“If you don’t go and vote then how can we understand that you’re not just indifferent? How can we understand that you’re against [the system]? What can be done so that your voice is heard?… If we do not get together to change things then our lives will be awful and unbearable.  We’ll be arrested for our beliefs, they’ll throw green dye in our faces, our children will want to leave the country.  Navalny and other independent politicians will be sent to prison and nothing will change.  How can we show them that we don’t like what’s going on?”

The campaign being conducted as a protest vote against the current elite is a clever method of returning the “none of the above” option to the ballot, which was removed some years ago.  Sobchak says at the end of her video address that she wants to “return the option of voting against everyone else.”

“This is our own peaceful and legal way of saying: guys, come on, we’ve had enough of you.”

The 2018 presidential elections are set to be an interesting spectacle, regardless of the fact that it is unanimously believed that Vladimir Putin will run, and subsequently win the presidency for a further 6 years.  Vladimir Putin has still not officially announced his candidacy, although it is predicted he will do so in the coming weeks.