Less than two months ahead of the election, a Moscow court convicts one of the highest-ranking officials to be arrested in office since Putin was first elected president in 2000.

Russian Ex-Governor Given Eight Years In High-Profile Bribery Case

A Moscow court has sentenced former Kirov Oblast Governor Nikita Belykh to eight years in prison following his conviction on bribery charges.

The court on February 1 also ordered Belykh to pay a 48.5 million ruble ($866,000) fine in the high-profile case. Belykh was also barred from holding public office for an additional three years.

Full story here.

If Yavlinsky doesn't win the election, of course! :-)

Will Yavlinsky get a Kremlin job after elections?

Ekho Moskvy is reporting that Grigory Yavlinsky might replace Vladislav Surkov as the Kremlin point man on Ukraine (!?!)

Cadre Rotations Ahead Of Elections?

Carnegie Moscow Center's Tatiana Stanovaya looks at the personnel changes that are in the works for after the election and what they portend for the system.

There are now 8 candidates left in the running

The deadline for candidates to submit signatures of support to the Central Election Commission passed on January 31.

Six of them did so, including Putin, Sobchak, Yavlinsky, Suraikin, Titov, Baburin. The Central Election Commission now has 10 days to verify signatures. Two other candidates backed by parliamentary parties automatically passed this stage.

So the candidates still standing are:

Vladimir Putin

Sergei Baburin of the Russian All-People Union

Ksenia Sobchak, a TV personality

Maksim Suraikin of the Communists Of Russia party

Boris Titov, business ombudsman

Grigory Yavlinsky, Yeltsin-era liberal founder of Yabloko

Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia

Pavel Grudinin of the Communist Party

The Power Vertical's Brian Whitmore speculated in his Morning Vertical on February 1 on the Kremlin's strategy with respect to opposition leader, and barred would-be presidential candidate, Aleksei Navalny:

Vladimir Putin's regime sure is expending a lot of energy on someone it claims not to be worried about....

In his remarks about Navalny, [Putin spokesman Dmitry] Peskov said: "I don't think anybody can doubt that Putin is the absolute leader of public opinion, the absolute leader of the political Olympus...with whom it is unlikely that anyone can seriously compete with at this stage."

Certainly not in the stage-managed event scheduled for March 18 that the Kremlin calls an election. The result of the vote is a foregone conclusion.

But the Kremlin appears spooked by Navalny's ability to spoil the big show and to troll the regime's legitimization ritual.

And in the bigger picture, in the Russia beyond March 18, the Kremlin is clearly worried about Navalny despite Peskov's protestations to the contrary.

From our Newsroom:

Russia Kills Suspected Militant, Claims Election-Day Attack Thwarted

Russian law enforcement authorities say they have killed a suspected Islamic militant who they suggested may have been plotting an attack on the day of the presidential election next month.

In a statement on February 1, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said officers killed the man when he put up armed resistance as they attempted to arrest him in the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod.

The suspect was from an unnamed former Soviet republic other than Russia and was a member of the militant group Islamic State (IS), it said, without providing evidence.

It said the suspect "was prepared to carry out" a terrorist attack on March 18, the day of an election that seems certain to hand President Vladimir Putin a new six-year term.

A search turned up a powerful homemade bomb, components for more explosive devices, guns, and ammunition, it said.

MORE

The Turnout Watch

State pollster VTsIOM now says that 71 percent of Russians intend to take part in the elections, surpassing an important benchmark for the Kremlin, which is thought to be aiming for 70-percent turnout. In December, the independent Levada Center had been forecasting record low turnout of 52-54 percent. (It's hard to motivate people to vote at an election that is a foregone conclusion.) Navalny has since begun campaigning for an election boycott. It is possible that Grudinin and Sobchak, new faces in the running, may have injected some interest.

Here is the polling data from VTsIOM. Bear in mind it is a state pollster. Levada now cannot publish election data because of its "foreign agent" status.

Navalny Media Aide Given Eight-Day Sentence Over Election-Boycott Protest

By RFE/RL's Russian Service

A Moscow court has sentenced a prominent associate of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny to eight days in jail on charges of participating in an illegal demonstration.

Ruslan Shaveddinov, who hosts video programs on Navalny's YouTube channel, was pronounced guilty and sentenced on January 31, one day after he and Navalny's press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, were detained at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport.

The court's ruling stressed that Shaveddinov's violations were committed "with the goal of forming a negative image of one of the registered candidates" for the March 18 presidential election, evidently referring to incumbent President Vladimir Putin.

MORE

Russian Polling Place In Pyongyang

Russians can vote in one of the most repressive countries in the world: North Korea.

Once stalwart communist allies, ties between Pyongyang and Moscow withered after the Soviet collapse. But the two countries maintain diplomatic relations, and some limited economic interaction. And Pyongyang has been in the news a lot lately over its nuclear weapons program and heated public standoff with the United States.