Commission Asks State TV To Reconsider Stone-Putin Broadcasts

Vedomosti reports that the Central Election Committee has asked state-owned Channel One television to rethink plans to rebroadcast a series of interviews this week that filmmaker Oliver Stone conducted with President Putin in 2015-17.

The committee said that broadcasting the program would not violate the law because it does not urge people to vote in any particular way and does not include any positive or negative characterizations of any candidates, including Putin. However, the CEC told Channel One "it is necessary to act with a heightened degree of care" to prevent the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Earlier, the Yavlinsky and Sobchak campaigns complained about the four-part program, which began airing on February 12 and is scheduled to continue through February 15.

More On Putin's 'Cold'

After the Kremlin announced that President Putin "has a cold" and began canceling his public appearances, some on Russian social media immediately began joking that he was actually undergoing plastic surgery. There have been unconfirmed rumors for many years that the 65-year-old Putin uses botox injections and other medical procedures to keep up his appearance.

This meme, for example, says that "By the time of the election, Putin will look younger than Sobchak," who is 36.

Back to the terrible '90s?

One of the main arguments that Putin's supporters like to assert is that he pulled Russia out of the "disaster" of the 1990s.

But in at least one regard, Putin is returning to that time. His election slogan -- "A strong president -- a strong Russia!" was apparently first test-marketed by Boris Yeltsin, as this side-by-side image shows. Right down to the exclamation mark.

It isn't clear, but the Yeltsin poster probably stems from the time of Russia's April 1993 referendum on whether Russians backed the president or the parliament in the country's developing political standoff. Russians still remember how to vote on that four-question referendum from the endlessly repeated slogan, "Da, da, nyet, da."

Election Supervisor Says Four Candidates Filed 'Inauthentic' Asset Declarations

The Central Election Commission says four candidates have not yet filed "authentic information about their income," according to Interfax.

The commission did not say which candidates it had in mind but merely added that the four have been informed of the problem and that it will be corrected before the official election poster is printed.

Asset declarations can be seen by clicking on the names of the candidates on the Central Election Commission's website.

More Portraits of Putin From Children

Blogger Ilya Varlamov has collected some of the portraits of President Putin that have been submitted to a national competition being organized in connection with the March 18 election.

School Lines Up Students For Putin

An English teacher in Daghestan enlisted schoolchildren in a pro-Putin action, Current Time TV reports.

The local administration posted on VK the lineup of kids holding signs like "Putin our President" and "Thanks for everything to Putin," and "We vote for Putin."

More On Schools

A teacher in Kazan (who asked not to be named) said faculty at High School No. 75 have all been ordered to vote in the March 18 presidential election. "It doesn't matter who you vote for, the administration says, but you must vote," the teacher said.

In addition, teachers have been instructed to call students' parents at home and urge them to vote.

The director of the school, Larisa Pomykova, said these reports were "complete disinformation" and refused to comment further.

In January, RFE/RL reported that the education department in Kazan had ordered all kindergarten staff to come to work with their passports and sign petitions in support of Putin's candidacy. Education officials also denied this report.

Tatarstan historically has one of the highest rates of electoral falsification in Russia and has been targeted by opposition politician Aleksei Navalny for particularly close monitoring this time around.

Anti-Putin Posters in Leningrad Oblast

St. Petersburg activist Andrei Pivovarov has posted on Facebook some photographs of anti-Putin election posters that he found in surrounding Leningrad Oblast.

"Say yes to the motherland! Say no to Putin!" the homemade signs and graffiti say. One adds: "Peace to Ukraine. Freedom to Russia."

Sobchak Files Supreme Court Case To Remove Putin From Ballot

Candidate Sobchak has filed a case with the Supreme Court requesting that President Putin be removed from the ballot.

The reason? She revives a lingering debate over the country's constitutional ban on anyone serving more than two consecutive terms.

Putin served two full four-year terms, 2000-04 and 2004-08, before taking up the prime minister's post while his hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, spent four years in the Kremlin.

He then won a new six-year term in 2012.

Commission Member Bats Down Sobchak's Supreme Court Challenge Of Putin

Shortly after Ksenia Sobchak filed her case with the Russian Supreme Court to have President Putin removed from the ballot, an official of the Central Election Commission responded.

Nikolai Bulaev, deputy chairman of the commission, said the topic -- presumably referring to the constitutionality of third and fourth terms for Putin -- has been chewed over many times, adding: "At the present moment, there are no restrictions barring Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] from running."