Russia's ruling party United Russia will hold its annual convention on December 10 in order to leave a chance for President Vladimir Putin to run for re-election in 2018 under party's umbrella, Gazeta.ru reported on September 5 citing unnamed sources. 

There has not been an official announcement yet, but few doubt that Russia's leader effectively in power since 2000 will run and be elected for his fourth non-consecutive six year term in 2018. And he faces almost no opposition: Putin's approval rating ticked up to 83% in July, according to the latest Levada Center poll. Likewise, another poll showed the number of Russians that think the country is going in the right direction is at a two year high. 

Putin might also choose to run as an independent, but the final decision is not yet taken, souces in Kremlin told Gazeta. The decision by the Central Election Committee needs to be taken between December 8  and December 18. 

With elections looming in spring 2018, earlier reports suggested that Kremlin is struggling to draft the principles of communication campaign for possible re-election of Putin.

The "future vision" for the platform is facing difficulties, unnamed sources in the presidential administration and the federal government told the Vedomosti daily on July 17. Reportedly over a dozen meetings and rotating three curators did not help advance the the communication platform.

The communication strategy is said to be cross-institutional project involving the council of United Russia, Valdai discussion club, Pan-Russian People's Front, VTsIOM pollster, and others, overseen by first deputy head of the presidential administration Sergey Kiriyenko. 

One of the main themes that has emerged is a slogan of "justice, respect, and trust", marking the main values of future development of Russia, but this reportedly is not seen as a sufficient strong "vision for the future" to carry the whole campaign.

"There are many concepts too different to be tied together, with the work [on the platform] being stalled due to multitude of ideas," a source told Vedomosti.