A pro-war Russian nationalist who played a leading role in bringing down the MH17 airliner over Ukraine has said he wants to run for president against Vladimir Putin despite describing the forthcoming election as a “sham”.

In a letter published by his account on Telegram, Igor Girkin, a former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia to annex Crimea, said: “I understand perfectly well that in the current situation in Russia, participating in the presidential campaign is like sitting down at a table to play with card sharps.”

Girkin said that he did not think that he would be allowed to take part in the election, but hoped that his attempt to unite patriotic forces would disrupt the Kremlin’s plan for a “sham election” in which “the only winner is known in advance”.

“This is our chance to unite in the face of external and internal threats,” he said in the letter post entitled “I am going to run.”

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said in an interview published on Friday that he hoped Putin would run in the March election for another term as president, a move that would keep him in power until at least 2030.

Opposition politicians say Putin has built a dictatorial system since he first came to power in 1999 that mimics the institutions of democracy while preventing any true political competition or real dissent.

Girkin was a commander of the separatist-backed forces in Ukraine when the MH17 airliner was shot out of the sky, killing 298 passengers. He was found guilty in a Dutch court last year, in absentia.

A monarchist who wrote a dissertation on the “White Russians” who fought the “Red” Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution, he one of the most prominent nationalists who has criticised Russia’s execution of the war, which he casts as part of an existential battle with an arrogant West.

He has called the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union “positive” but says the post-Soviet Russian elite was corrupt and working for the West to weaken Russia.