Putin's Presidential Campaign to Start Airing Pre-Vote Ads on TV From Monday

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - The campaign office of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is participating in the 2018 presidential election, will start airing pre-election advertisement videos on TV channels starting from Monday, the campaign press secretary said Friday.

"You will see the videos on February 19," Andrei Kondrashov told reporters.

The official added that Putin's authorized representatives would not be in the pre-election videos, because Russia's legislation prohibits such activities.

READ MORE: Russia Warns West Continued Election Meddling Will be Met by Hard Measures

The Russian presidential election is scheduled for March 18, while the official campaign kicked off on December 18. Media campaigning is set to begin on Saturday and to last until March 17.

Apart from Putin, there are seven other people running: Sergey Baburin from the All-People's Union party, Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin, head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Civic Initiative party candidate Ksenia Sobchak, Communists of Russia party chairman Maxim Suraykin, business ombudsman Boris Titov, and co-founder of the Yabloko Party Grigory Yavlinsky.