Mr. Kharitonov said he was going to prepare a request to the Central Election Commission regarding this episode. He said he would request that other candidates for President should be given the same airtime as Mr. Putin’s broadcast for covering their meetings with their supporters.

Irina Khakamada, who is running in the elections as an independent, has filed a similar request with the Central Election Commission.

For his part, Alexander Veshnyakov, Chairman of the Central Election Commission of Russia, said some media sources had gone too far in their coverage of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with his supporters in the presidential race on Thursday. He said he did not “see all of it on TV”, and he was not yet ready to comment on the coverage.

In Mr. Veshnyakov’s opinion, the number of candidates in the presidential elections can drop to 6-5 people. According to him, “someone could pull out of the race”.

In view of this, Mr. Veshnyakov said there was no need to hurry with the preparation of election ballots. 110,999,750 ballots should be ready by February 22. He said Ivan Rybkin could drop out of the race before February 18.

On February 10, the Central Election Commission approved the text of election bulletins. It includes the names of seven registered candidates. They are arranged in the alphabetical order: Sergei Glazyev (b. 1961), the leader of the Rodina (Motherland) bloc and a member of the State Duma; Oleg Malyshkin (b. 1951), nominated by the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia; Sergei Mironov (b. 1953), Speaker of the Federation Council (the upper house of Parliament), nominated by the Russian Party of Life; Vladimir Putin (b. 1952), the incumbent President of Russia; Ivan Rybkin (b. 1946), the former head of Russia’s Security Council; Irina Khakamada (b. 1955), a member of the SPS (Union of Right Forces) party; and Nikolai Kharitonov (b. 1948), nominated by the Communist Party.