Small pro-Putin party won't contest president vote

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Fair Russia, the smaller of two parties backing President Vladimir Putin, will not nominate its own candidate for the presidential election in March, the party's leader said on Friday.

"Our party with 99.9 percent probability will not put forward its own candidate in the presidential election and we are determined to support another candidate who is running in the election," Sergei Mironov told a news conference in Moscow.

The party won just under 8 percent support in last weekend's elections, scraping into parliament, but failed to supplant the Communists as the country's main left-wing party. The Communists came second with 11.6 percent support.

Fair Russia must still decide which candidate from another party to endorse in the presidential poll, Mironov said, with the closing date for nominations two weeks away.

Fair Russia was considered one of the vehicles through which Putin could nominate a successor, but Moscow analyst Yevgeny Volk of the Heritage Foundation said he had not expected it to contest the presidential election.

"Mironov was one of the first to suggest a third term for Putin and on the majority of issues his party appeared as another pro-presidential party. It's natural for me that he doesn't nominate a presidential candidate," said Volk.

"Putin will have to articulate who he feels should be his successor. But the formal deadline is December 23, so we still have about 17 days until he must decide," said the analyst.

(Reporting by Conor Sweeney; Writing by James Kilner and Conor Sweeney, editing by Tim Pearce)