The newspaper Kommersant conducted an analysis of the financial side of the Russian presidential campaign, detailing how much money was spent and how much revenue parties and candidates reported receiving during the race, as reported in the publication. The report highlights that Vladislav Davankov, the nominee from the New People party, invested more resources into the election than most of his rivals. According to data from the Central Election Commission, the election fund total reached 368.2 million rubles. With 3,362,484 votes cast for Davankov, the cost per vote equates to 110 rubles, while the report notes that he also spent a substantial portion of his time campaigning on television and radio. The figures are presented by Kommersant as a snapshot within the broader financing landscape of the campaign (Kommersant).
Leonid Slutsky, the LDPR candidate and party leader, allocated roughly 212 million rubles from his election fund. The analysis shows a heavy emphasis on print materials, with television advertising receiving relatively little attention. Slutsky is quoted as saying that the price of a vote worked out to about 76 rubles, a reflection of his campaign’s resource allocation pattern (Kommersant).
Nikolai Kharitonov, the Communist Party contender, spent about 166 million rubles in total. His reported cost per vote stood at 44 rubles, with the campaign focusing on printed propaganda. Conversely, television and radio advertising accounted for only around 12 million rubles of his expenses, suggesting a strategy that leaned toward ground campaigns rather than mass media buys (Kommersant).
Vladimir Putin ran as a self-nominated candidate and directed a campaign that spent 161 million rubles on television and radio advertising. The total campaign expenditure for Putin reached 317 million rubles, meaning television and radio represented roughly half of his spending. The cost per vote for his candidacy was reported to be about 4 rubles, reflecting the heavy use of broadcast media in his approach (Kommersant).
The Kommersant analysis notes that every party directly participating in the election campaign is expected to receive additional funding from the federal budget beyond what they spent. The law provides that a party nominating the candidate who secures more than 3 percent of the votes is entitled to a one-time payment calculated per vote. In Putin’s case, there was no candidate approved by a nominational party to trigger that allotment, since he ran independently. The report cites large sums credited to several actors: the Communist Party of the Russian Federation reportedly earned 573 million rubles from the New People campaign, 511 million rubles for the Liberal Democratic Party, and 425 million rubles for the LDPR, as noted by Kommersant (Kommersant).
The publication also mentions that final figures remain pending, with candidates required to file their final financial reports within a month of the close of the campaign, leaving some elements of the total still subject to verification and adjustment (Kommersant).
Previously, Vyacheslav Volodin, the Chairman of the State Duma, characterized the latest presidential elections as open and legitimate, conducted on a competitive basis, according to remarks cited by Kommersant (Kommersant).
The presidential elections in Russia took place over March 15–17, with the Russian Central Election Commission reporting results that placed Putin at 87.28 percent, Kharitonov at 4.31 percent, Davankov at 3.85 percent, and Slutsky at 3.2 percent (Kommersant).
There were, however, later statements from Kremlin circles suggesting that attempts to challenge or refuse to recognize the results were considered untenable by officials, a stance described as unsupported in official channels (Kommersant).