Our defence and security analyst Professor Michael Clarke has been responding to the news the Vladimir Putin has announced he will stand in next year's presidential elections.
He says that, having fixed the constitution to allow him to run repeatedly for the post, the Russian leader is known in analytical circles as "Vladimir the indefinite".
"He will just keep on running until he steps down or is removed or dies," he says.
Of next year's election, Clarke says: "They'll put up a few joke candidates against him who will get paid and rewarded for running silly campaigns and getting a derisory vote.
"The real opposition is just literally imprisoned and hounded out of Russia and so on."
However, he says, the vote next year is not without concerns for the Kremlin.
"What bothers them about these electoral processes is that the election process itself may actually bring other complaints to light, particularly about the war," he says.
"I mean, next year the Russian budget is going to spend another 70% on defence. That means that defence will have increased by 300% since the invasion.
"And for the first time next year, Russians will feel for the first time since the Cold War, they'll feel the effect of this war in health, education, social security.
"That's all being reduced to pay for the fact that defence is now three times bigger than it was before. The whole economy is being turned into a war economy.
"So the election campaign... might throw up other things which the Kremlin might find more difficult to deal with."
