ANALYSIS | Who wants to take on Vladimir Putin?

Russian politics have become interesting again.

It didn't happen until right after the questionable parliamentary elections of Dec. 4, when Muscovites took to the streets in numbers not seen since the 1990s and never under the reign ofVladimir Putin, Russia's current prime minister and past president.

The day before the Dec. 10 protest, the biggest so far,CBCNews.ca briefly lookedat whether something akin to the Arab Spring was occurring in Russiaand profiles some of the leading opposition figures. We weren't the only ones.

Russian politics, "by all accounts, have lost much of their predictability," Dan Peleschuk wrote on the state-owned news website Russia Profile.

And yet all is still not as it seems, as author and journalist Luke Harding explained in an interview on CBC Radio's Dispatches about his hew book, Mafia State: How One Reporter Became An Enemy of the Brutal New Russia.

According to Harding, "The Kremlin system is a pretend world. So, you have pretend political parties in a pretend parliament. You have a pretend opposition, and you have oligarchs who are pretend presidential candidates."

So,in Russia,the term "opposition" can be tricky.

For political opposition, Russians have two categories. First there's the "systemic opposition,"which refers to theparties that support Vladimir Putin and are allowed to run in elections.

Then there are the parties and movements that oppose Putin, which may have widely divergent goals.

To confuse matters further, opposition members often gravitate from one category to another.

Most of the candidates who have said they will run against Putin in the March 4 presidential election are Putin supporters.

Familiar candidates

The field of presidential candidates might give voters a sense of dj vu. Five of the candidates have run in presidential elections before.

Leading figures of the "non-systemic" opposition have yet to enter the race, mostly because they considered the outcome fixed orhad their nomination or registration papers rejected by the authorities.

For all sides,the past weekshave been busy. Putin went on television for over four hours on Dec. 15. Several new people have registered as presidential candidates. There were smaller protests on Dec. 17-18,and plans have gone ahead for a largerprotest on Dec. 24.

Below isa list of themain candidates already in the presidential race and some whoare consideringentering the race.

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putinwas Boris Yeltsin's chosen successor and became president after Yeltsin resigned on Dec. 31, 1999. Putin brought stability following the chaos of the Yeltsin years.

Putin moved from the president's office to that of the prime minister in 2008 after he had served the constitutional maximum two terms. Now, he plans to switch offices again with current President Dmitry Medvedev.

The Russian constitution doesn't prevent former presidents from running again and thanks to amendments passed by Medvedev extending presidential terms by two years, ifPutin does win, he could potentially servetwo six-year terms.

Putin will not take part in any candidate debates during the campaign, his spokesman,Dmitriy Peskov, said on Jan. 12.

Mikhail Prokhorov

The billionaire owner of the NBA New Jersey Nets basketball team, Mikhail Prokhorov, announced on Dec. 12 that he would beentering the presidential race. Justa week earlier, he declared his support for Putin onhis blog: "Like it or not, Putin is still the only person capable of running this ineffective state machine, at least to some degree."

Earlier this year,Prokhorov made his first foray into politics, as leader of a Kremlin-created party, Right Cause.He was forced out in September, for which he blamedKremlin power brokers.

Harding argues that, "Prokhorov is a Kremlin project to attract and siphon off middle class discontent."

Gennady Zyuganov

The 2012 election will be Gennady Zyuganov's fourth time as the Communist Party's presidential candidate. In 2008, he received 18 per cent of the vote.

Zyuganov, 67, has been active in the Communist Party since 1966 and its leader since 1993.

A year ago, to mark the anniversary of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's death, Zyuganov called for the "re-Stalinization" of Russia.

On the important votes in the Duma, the Russian parliament, Communist Party deputies usually vote for Putin's programs, observers have noted.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky

Vladimir Zhirinovsky is running for president for the fifth time. In 2008 he had the support of 10 per cent of the electorate.

Zhirinovsky, 65, is also vice-chairman of the Duma.

He has led the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia since 1990. At the time it was the only official party besides the Communists. The Kremlin and the KGB supported (and apparently initiated) its creation.

Zhirinovsky is known for both his comical and his racist remarks, for physically fighting his political opponents and for spitting at and threatening them. He's often viewed as something of a clown.

His campaign slogan for 2012 is, "Surrender."

Past campaign promises have included free vodka and free underwear. German magazine Der Spiegel called his 2008 platform "ludicrous." Spiegel described his efforts as "entirely to the Kremlin's liking because it helps to neutralize the potential of right-wing voters."

Sergei Mironov

On the front-page of Just Russia leader Sergei Mironov's English-languagewebsite,under publications, the headline "Pro-Kremlin Mironov ready to run for president" appears.

It links to a story from state-owned news agency Ria-Novosti, which concludes, "Some analysts see the Mironov case as a move by the Kremlin to cast him as an opposition figure who might subsequently head a "controlled opposition" to lend greater legitimacy to next year's presidential elections."

Mironov, 58, was chairman of the upper house of the Russian Parliament from 2001 to 2011. Although a Putin supporter, he ran in the 2004 presidential election, getting less than one per cent of the vote. In 2006 he became the leader of Just Russia.

During the 2011 parliamentary vote in December, Just Russia adopted the line of leading opposition figure, blogger Alexei Navalny, calling Putin's United Russia "the party of crooks and thieves." That's part of the reason Just Russia went from 38 to 64 seats.

Dmitry Mezentsev

When the plan for Putin and Medvedev to switch jobs again was made public in September, Irkutsk governor Dmitry Mezentsev, a Medvedev appointee, called it "a decision for the benefit of Russia."

On Dec. 14, Mezentsev joined the presidential race.

He is what in Russia is called a "safety candidate," there to make the race legally valid if all the candidates except Putin drop out.

Mezentsev, 52, and Putin both worked at St. Petersburg City Hall in the nineties.Mezentsev was a Federation Council senator until appointed governor in 2009.

Recently, a video that democracy activists claims shows students at a Moscow university preparing fake lists of supporters to get Mezentsev on the ballot has gone viral in Russia. Mezentsev denies the accusations.

Grigory Yavlinsky

On Dec. 19, the Yablokoparty registered its former leader,Grigory Yavlinsky, in the race for president.

Yavlinsky, 59, whose time in government goes back to the Gorbachev era, ran for president in 1996 and 2000 but sat out the next two campaigns, claiming the elections were rigged.

Yabloko ran in the parliamentary elections but according to the official count,received just three per cent of the vote. Yabloko held a small demonstration in Moscow on Dec. 17.

According to Natalia Bubnova of the Carnegie Moscow Center, "there might have been more manipulation with regard to Yabloko" in the vote count. She argues that, "the authorities did not want Yabloko to get evenfive per cent because that would have allowed the party's leader, Grigory Yavlinsky, to run for the presidency without collecting the two million signatures that he will now need to appear on the ballot."

In a video released Jan. 10, Yavlinsky directly confronts the question of why he is participating this time, saying,"I'm going to sit down with the cheats and beat them."

Other candidates

The Central Election Commission has approved the registration of these candidates:

Svetlana Peunova, who describes herself as a "medicineless healer" and leader of the Volya party is the only woman in the race. Her campaign attracted a mere hundred people or so to a Jan. 8 rally in Moscow.

Former Vladivostok mayor Viktor Cherepkov, a Putin supporter, and businessman Renat Khamiev, along with Prokhorov andMezentsev,have also been approved as self-nominated candidates.

They are nowrequired to submit two million signatures that the authorities must then approve before they can take part in the campaign, a major hurdle and expense. The deadline for collecting the signatures is Jan. 18.

In the past, the Kremlin has disqualified signatures for pretexts like bad handwriting or even bad punctuation.

Rejected candidates

Eduard Limonovsubmitted his application to be a registered candidate in the presidential election, but the electoral commission rejected it on Dec. 17 over a technicality in the paperwork, a decision upheldby the Russian Supreme Court on Dec. 30.

Limonov, 68, is one of the leaders of Other Russia (along with chess great Garry Kasparov), a coalition of left- and right-wing opponents of Putin. Limonov is the founder and leader of the National Bolshevik Party, a key coalition member.

Limonov was a well-known writer before he returned to Russia in 1991 after eight years in New York and nine years in Paris.

Other Russia was blocked from contesting the 2011 parliamentary elections, something Limonov called "a huge manipulation." He was detained by police at an election night rally.

Leonid Ivashov, a former joint chief of staff of the Russian Armed Forces, filed for registration but was rejected on Dec. 17 on a technicality.He is the president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems and frequently quoted by the Russia media.

Nicolai Levashov, a self-described healer who lived in the U.S. for 15 years, registered, but the electoral commission rejected his candidacy on Dec. 16, because he did not return to Russia from the U.S.until 2006 and a candidate is required tohave livedin the country for at least 10 years prior to running.