Russian president Vladimir Putin will spend the maximum allowed on his presidential campaign bid of RUB400mn ($7mn).

Russia's central election commission revealed the amount for funds available to registered candidates, with incumbent Putin far ahead of his competitors.

As of January 5, Putin had RUB400mn ($7mn) in his election fund, and has already spent RUB13.4mn on print materials.

RUB400mn is the maximum amount permitted by law, and it is bigger than the combined election funds of all of Putin's competitors put together.

Putin's fund is made up of contributions from the largest political party, United Russia, which provided RUB28mn, again, the maximum allowed contribution by a party.

Also, one private individual contributed over RUB20,000, but neither the election commission, nor Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov revealed the name of the contributor.

LDPR head Vladimir Zhirinovsky has the second largest campaign fund of just over RUB200mn. Business ombudsman Boris Titov was able to secure RUB20.7mn. TV host Ksenia Sobchak has RUB19.4mn and Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky RUB15mn.

The smallest amount, RUB1,066, is in the fund of the Communist candidate, multimillionaire businessman Pavel Grudinin.

The formal amounts in the various politicians’ funds do not reflect their ability to campaign. Most of the state-supported candidates have access to state media with the state-owned television remaining the main source of information for most of the population. There is almost no political advertising in Russia and the Kremlin can simply order the state controlled media to cover (or ignore) any event or person it wants to.