Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has announced he will run for office at the country's next presidential elections in 2018.

The anti-corruption crusader is the first candidate to declare participation in a campaign which will almost certainly see him directly challenging Vladimir Putin for the keys to the Kremlin.

Mr Putin, who served two terms between 2000 and 2008 and returned to the presidency in 2012, has not yet said whether he will stand for a fourth term but is almost certain to do so.

"I am going to the polls, and I am going to fight to win," Mr Navalny said in a video announcing his candidacy.

"I am going to speak about things people refuse to talk about, but which it is high time were said."

On a website headed with the slogan, 'it's time to choose', he listed corruption, the concentration of the country's wealth in the hands of a tiny elite, the failure of the court system to deliver justice to ordinary people, and lies in the Russian media as campaign issues.

Expand Close Russian President Vladimir Putin plays with his Akita-inu dog Yume. Photo: AP AP / Facebook

Twitter

Email

Whatsapp Russian President Vladimir Putin plays with his Akita-inu dog Yume. Photo: AP

Mr Navalny, a lawyer who emerged as the most visible leader of a loose alliance of opposition groups that staged a series of massive protests against Mr Putin's rule in 2011 and 2012, has in the past courted both liberals and nationalists opposed to the current Russian government.

It is far from certain he will appear on the ballot paper, however, and faces court cases that could scupper his candidacy long before the polls.

A Moscow court handed Mr Navalny a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence and his brother Oleg a three-and-a-half-year jail term for defrauding the French Cosmetics firm Yves Rocher in December 2014, in a case the brothers said was politically motivated.

In November, Russia's supreme Court overturned Mr Navalny's conviction in another fraud case, involving a timber company, and ordered a retrial after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Mr Navalny's rights had been violated in the original 2013 trial.

He would probably be banned from the 2018 election if re-convicted.

Mr Navalny was last on a ballot in 2013, when he took 27pc of the vote in elections for Mayor of Moscow and nearly forced a second round run-off against Sergei Sobyanin, the Kremlin-backed incumbent.

Mr Navalny was allowed to stand in that election after being unexpectedly released on bail immediately after the timber fraud conviction, a move many attribute to Mr Sobyanin, who wanted to be seen to win a fair election against a genuine competitor.

That has led to speculation the Kremlin may seek to use him in a similar role to legitimise Mr Putin's re-election.

However, that may be seen as an unnecessary risk.

Unlike Mikhail Prokhorov, the billionaire businessman who stood on a liberal platform at the last election in 2012, Mr Navalny is not shy about openly and bitterly attacking Mr Putin and those around him.

This year the anti-corruption campaign group he runs has published a string of embarrassing revelations about high-placed figures including Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, Igor Shuvalov, a long-serving deputy prime minister, and Igor Sechin, a close ally of Mr Putin.

(© Daily Telegraph London)

Irish Independent