The daughter of the first President of Russia, Tatyana Yumasheva, has no plans to participate in presidential elections in 2018, said the report by the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center.
“She has repeatedly said she never had political ambitions and she is not going to engage in political activities in the future,” the statement says.
Recall that Russian tycoon and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who’s vowed to end Vladimir Putin’s rule after he spent a decade in prison under the Kremlin leader, has launched a project to identify replacements for Russian President Vladimir Putin in the 2018 presidential election.
Khodorkovsky told Moscow journalists from London on September 12 that the project, called “Instead of Putin,” had been launched online at Vmestoputina.ru.
The billionaire former Yukos Oil Co. chief, who’s backing 18 opposition candidates in Russia’s parliamentary election on Sunday, said the new project seeks to answer the question of “who instead of Putin” can be a credible president. His Open Elections organization lists 13 possible candidates on a website, including Yabloko Party leader Grigory Yavlinsky, former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny, and Tatyana Yumasheva, daughter of the late President Boris Yeltsin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on September 12 that Khodorkovsky’s project “has been outlined by people, who are irrevocably cut off from Russia and…Russian agenda.”
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that Mikhail Khodorkovsky said he won’t run in 2018 presidential elections as he announced a contest to find an opposition challenger.
“I don’t plan to announce my own candidacy,” Khodorkovsky, 53, told reporters in Moscow on Monday via a video link from London, where he’s in exile after being pardoned by Putin and freed in 2013, according to Bloomberg. While “the presidential election will be a quasi-election” that won’t permit a change of power, it’s important “to present new faces to the public,” he said.
Khodorkovsky was Russia’s richest man when he was jailed in 2003 on tax-evasion and money-laundering charges that he says were retribution for funding opposition parties.
