Ramzan Kadyrov, head of Russia's Chechnya region and close ally of President Vladimir Putin, proposed on Saturday that a presidential election due next March should either be postponed due to the war in Ukraine or limited to one candidate - Putin.
The Kremlin leader, who turned 71 on Saturday, has said he will not announce if he will run before parliament calls the election, which by law it is due to do in December.
Putin has dominated Russia for more than two decades and, having suppressed all significant political opposition, would be all but certain to win an election and, as widely expected, extend his stay in the Kremlin to 2030.
However, Russia's failures in the war, which Moscow calls a "special military operation", have made events less predictable.
The state-run RIA news agency said Kadyrov had spoken on Saturday at a rally in the centre of the Chechen capital Grozny, put at 25,000 people, to mark Putin's birthday.
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