Russian President, Vladimir Putin on Monday gave final approval to legislation allowing him to hold office for two additional six-year terms, giving himself the possibility to stay in power until 2036.

The 68-year-old Russian leader, who has already been in power for more than two decades, signed off on the bill Monday, according to a copy posted on the government’s legal information portal.

Putin proposed the change last year as part of constitutional reforms that Russians overwhelmingly backed in a vote in July. Lawmakers approved the new bill last month.

The legislation will allow Putin to run in presidential elections again after his current and second consecutive term expires in 2024.

Vladimir Putin was first elected president in 2000 and served two consecutive four-year terms. His ally Dmitry Medvedev took his place in 2008, which critics saw as a way around Russia’s limit on two consecutive terms for presidents.

While in office, Medvedev signed off on legislation extending terms to six years starting with the next president.

Putin then returned to the Kremlin in 2012, winning re-election in 2018.

Kremlin opponents have criticised the legislation allowing him to run for two more terms, calling it a pretext to allow Putin to become “president for life”.

Putin has been Russia’s most powerful politician since he assumed the presidency in 2000, after the resignation of his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.

If he remains in power until 2036, his tenure will surpass even that of Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union for 29 years, making Putin the longest-serving Moscow leader since the Russian empire.

Officially, the new law limits Russian citizens to two presidential terms in their lifetime, outlawing the kind of shuffling between the presidency and the role of prime minister that Putin employed earlier in his career.

But the law specifically does not count terms served until it entered into force, meaning that Putin’s past four terms (including the current term) do not count and he can still serve two more. Russians say that he has “zeroed out” his terms.

Analysts have said the law may not indicate that Putin wants to remain president, but simply wants to avoid being a lame duck and provoking a power struggle during his last term in office.

However, Putin has made a habit of remaining in power at every moment he could have bowed out and anointed a successor. Some believe he has not found a way to transfer power and ensure that he and his family would remain safe in his retirement. The new law also gives him and former president Dmitry Medvedev lifetime immunity from prosecution.