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Dmitry Medvedev may be Russia's president but Vladimir Putin has kept his place in the Kremlin. When Putin came to his old office in the Kremlin on Monday to propose the names of ministers for his government, the former president made for his customary seat on the left of the desk. But he paused before sitting down and told President Medvedev: "Now this is your place," Russia's Kommersant daily reported. "Oh, what's the difference?" Medvedev answered and immediately sat on the right of the desk, where Putin's guests traditionally perched for the eight years of his presidency.

"Nuclear missiles and tanks paraded Friday across Red Square for the first time since the Soviet era but new President Dmitry Medvedev warned other nations against "irresponsible ambitions" that he said could start wars. Marching bands and 8,000 troops goose-stepped across the square, followed by a huge display of heavy weapons including Topol-M ballistic missiles and T-90 tanks, and a fly-by of warplanes. Reviewing his first parade as commander in chief, Medvedev warned against "irresponsible ambitions" that he said could spark war across entire continents. In an apparent attack on US foreign policy and Western backing for Kosovo's independence, Medvedev...

MOSCOW (AP) — When Boris Yeltsin left the Kremlin eight years ago, he gave Vladimir Putin the pen he had used to sign important documents and decrees, a gesture symbolizing the transfer of power to Russia's new president. When Putin left the Kremlin, he took the pen with him. Putin, who became prime minister Thursday, has signaled that he intends to remain Russia's principal leader, at least in the short term — and possibly much longer. He is keeping the trappings of his presidency and many of its powers as well. It was not always meant to be this way....

SHORTLY AFTER being sworn in as Russian president yesterday, Dmitry Medvedev declared that "my most important task is to further develop civil and economic freedoms." Above all, said the 42-year-old former law professor, "we must achieve true respect for the law and end the legal nihilism that is seriously hindering modern development." That was a remarkable statement under the circumstances. Mr. Medvedev, after all, owes his position to the "legal nihilism" of outgoing president Vladimir Putin, who grossly abused both the letter and the spirit of Russia's nominally democratic constitution to install a handpicked successor. Mr. Putin, who takes over...

Two Russian newspapers, Nezavisimaya gazeta and Moskovsky korrespondent, reported today, March 28, that Vladimir Putin will be named head of United Russia at a party congress that will be held in April. Noting that Putin used the occasion of a United Russia congress last October to announce that he would head the party’s federal list of candidates in the December 2007 State Duma election, and then used the occasion of a United Russia congress in December to accept Dmitry Medvedev’s invitation to serve as prime minister under a future Medvedev presidency, Nezavisimaya gazeta reported that Putin will use a United...

Russian President-Elect Dmitry Medvedev Russian President-elect Dmitry Medvedev is citing low popular support for NATO membership in Ukraine as his argument against NATO approval of a Ukrainian Membership Action Plan (MAP) at NATO’s April 2-4 summit (Interfax, Financial Times, March 26). This thesis is common to the Russian and German governments. While Moscow is adding direct threats to Ukraine in this context (see EDM, March 24), Berlin more elegantly refers to Ukrainian public opinion polls. Chancellor Angela Merkel has invoked this argument in rebuffing a personal appeal to her from U.S. President George W. Bush by video-conference. Bush was seeking...

What is it about Russia that drives the Anglo-American world mad? Soviet communism collapses, the empire is relinquished. Then come the wild hopes and failures of the 1990s—including the 1993 half-coup and the tank assault on Russia's legislature, the results-adjusted referendum on a new constitution (still in force), the dubious privatisations, the war in Chechnya and the financial default in 1998. But after all that, in December 1999 Boris Yeltsin apologises, steps down early—and names his prime minister and former secret police chief Vladimir Putin as acting president. To widespread consternation, Yeltsin predicts that the obscure spy is the man...

Russian Oscars censored24/03/2008 13:13  - (SA)    Moscow - A series of jokes about President Vladimir Putin and president-elect Dmitry Medvedev were censored from the screening of Russia's equivalent of the Oscars film awards ceremony, newspapers reported on Monday. The jokes - mild by Western standards of satire - at Friday's "Nika" awards, were cut by private television station CTC in its broadcasting Saturday of the event, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets. "All the juicy stuff from the broadcast was edited out," the daily said. One of the comments axed, the newspaper said, was an allusion to uncertainty over whether Medvedev or his...

The Kremlin has made little secret that its energy policies are unlikely to change in the wake of the 2 March presidential poll. Russia's president-elect Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly pledged to sustain what he has described as political "continuity." The first deputy prime minister still serves as chairman of the board of natural gas monopoly Gazprom and has tended to defend the gas giant against what he has called unfair criticism by the West, including claims of "energy blackmail." From 3 March, Gazprom cut gas supplies to Ukraine by 25 percent, and the following day it again limited gas supplies...

Russian secret services have foiled an attack on President Vladimir Putin close to Red Square, it has been claimed. A man with a sniper rifle and Kalashnikov assault gun was found and detained in a rented apartment overlooking Moscow's St Basil's Cathedral, on March 2, the day of the Presidential election in Russia. Mr Putin and his president-elect, Dmitry Medvedev, appeared under the cathedral for a late-night pop concert once early results indicated that Mr Medvedev would win a landslide. The popular Tvoi Den newspaper, which broke the story, claimed that both men could have been killed from the flat...

MOSCOW – A joke circulating among Russians these days has Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev waking up in the Kremlin in 2023 with vicious hangovers. Putin says to Medvedev: “Which of us is president and which of us is prime minister today?” “I don't remember,” Medvedev replies. “I could be prime minister today.” “Then go fetch some beer,” Putin says. The new odd couple in Russian politics has become ideal fodder for keeping the cherished, and in Soviet times, once dangerous Russian tradition of poking fun at leaders through satirical jokes called “anekdoty.” The latest crop of jokes plays on...

Outside Edge: Fashion’s black day By Vanessa Friedman Published: March 7 2008 18:36 | Last updated: March 7 2008 18:36 When history looks back on that strange phenomenon of the fin de siècle known as “business casual”, it may well cite last Monday as the day the movement died. That was the moment when Vladimir Putin, the outgoing Russian president, and Dmitry Medvedev, his successor, made a surprise appearance in Red Square in Moscow at a rock concert sporting, respectively, zip-up black nylon and black leather jackets and matching zip-up black polo necks. The outfits were, presumably, Mr Putin’s and...

NOVO OGARYEVO, Russia (AFP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday warned the West against expecting a thaw under his "nationalist" successor Dmitry Medvedev. "Dmitry Medvedev will be free to demonstrate his liberal views," Putin said after talks at his Novo Ogaryevo residence outside Moscow with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "But he is no less a Russian nationalist, in the good sense of the word, than I am, and I do not think that with him the partnership will be more simple." Putin issued the warning just before Merkel went to a separate meeting with Medvedev, the first between a...

Renowned for her penchant for parties, Russia's first-lady-in-waiting is toning down her socialite image, concentrating on church and charity work as her husband prepares to move into his Kremlin office. Svetlana Medvedev, 42, wife of president-elect Dmitry Medvedev, has been a fixture on Moscow's social circuit and at fashion shows and has a reputation as a deft organizer of charity functions at home and abroad, especially in France and Italy. She's also friends with Russia's top fashion designers, pop stars and movie directors. Her exuberant personality and fondness for fine clothing have drawn some comparisons with Raisa Gorbachev, the stylish...

Who remembers how to use a slide rule? Carbon paper? A telex machine? Such are the halfremembered skills of past decades. But for Russia-watchers, an equivalent long- dead technique is coming back: Kremlinology. Until Mikhail Gorbachev opened up the Kremlin in the late Eighties, we used to scrutinise the leaden prose of the misnamed Pravda (Truth) and Izvestiya(News) for a clue to the internal machinations of the Politburo. Now, outsiders (and Russians themselves) are looking frantically for an explanation of the farcical "hand-over of power" between Vladimir Putin and his hand-picked successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev. Historically, Western opinion has...

...Vaclav Havel, one of the very few truly great men of our time,... [a] lifelong advocate of nonviolent resistance, the last president of Czechoslovakia and the first president of the Czech Republic, is a very old 71, a frail survivor of cancer and years in Communist cells. But he's as passionate as ever about freedom. The climax of his speech to NATO's military and civilian leaders was a stark warning about Russia: "A dictatorship of a fairly new type is coming into existence to the east of the area under NATO protection. All basic human and civic freedoms are gradually...

The election of Dmitry Medvedev as Vladimir Putin's handpicked successor to be president of Russia provides an opportune moment to initiate a long-overdue review of America's strategy toward Russia. It should now be clear that there is broad-based support in Russia for the direction in which Putin has taken his country; popular discontent with issues such as corruption has not translated into a desire to overturn the system he has created. Despite the excessive degree to which the Kremlin controlled the election process, there is nothing to suggest that Sunday's results invalidate the popular acquiescence with what Putin has wrought...

Russia's new president has issued two clear messages designed to show he is no soft replacement for Vladimir Putin. Within hours of winning election Dmitry Medvedev allowed a pro-government youth march to descend on the US Embassy and the state-controlled gas monopoly reduced gas supplies to Western-leaning Ukraine. The moves are an early indication that Mr Medvedev, the president-elect, intends to continue the course set by his mentor Mr Putin, who has reasserted his country's power abroad while keeping a tight grip on society at home. Nearly final results from 99.45% of precincts showed that the 42-year-old Mr Medvedev had...

Putin, Medvedev pledge unified pathBy JIM HEINTZ, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago MOSCOW - Dmitry Medvedev, the man Vladimir Putin hand-picked to be his successor, scored a crushing victory in Russia's presidential elections Sunday, a result that was long anticipated but that still raises questions about who will run this resurgent global power. With ballots from over half of Russia's electoral precincts counted, Medvedev had 68.2 percent, according to the Central Election Commission. Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov had nearly 20 percent, it said. Medvedev was on course to win about 70 percent of the vote, according to a...

Vladimir Putin's chosen successor Dmitry Medvedev is set for a landslide victory in Russia's presidential election, according to an exit poll and early results. First official results from the Central Election Commission showed Mr Medvedev was leading with more than 64% of the votes after ballots from 16% of polling stations had been counted. Sky's Moscow correspondent Alex Rossi said: "As election dramas go, this was never going to be nail-biting - it was not going to be a cliff-hanger. "We all knew Dmitry Medvedev would romp home to victory against the three non-competitors he's been lined up against. Essentially...

Most analysts foresee a Kremlin double act after a loaded election, but some optimists scent a wind of change in Medvedev The campaign has been drearily insipid; the result a foregone conclusion. Unlike in the US, where the presidential election remains tantalisingly open, Russia's presidential election has been a lacklustre affair - because the man who counts has already voted. Vladimir Putin announced last December that he was backing Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister, to be the next President. Medvedev swiftly offered Putin the job of Prime Minister. Ever since, the Kremlin has been using its vast administrative...

The False Dmitry was an audacious fake who came forward after Ivan's death claiming to be his missing son, who had in fact been assassinated as a child. The False Dmitry was clearly not who he pretended to be but he won the crown anyway thanks to the gullibility of some of his countrymen and a deliberate decision by others to pretend to believe his lies. His rule lasted only 10 months before he was killed in a palace coup but the episode destabilised Russia for many years. The False Dmitry's tale, which inspired Pushkin's play Boris Godunov, comes to...

LONDON – MI6 agents have monitored secret meetings between top Serbian officials and Russian President Vladimir Putin's anointed successor, Dmitry Medvedev, to discuss the installation of Russian nuclear missiles to contribute to what he told a Moscow election rally this weekend would "help to ensure Serbian security." The president-in-waiting – no one seriously believes any other candidate will win this coming Sunday's election – also will ensure that President Vladimir Putin will become the nation's prime minister, effectively remaining the real power behind Medvedev after stepping down from the presidency. "In fact Putin's descent into the prime minister's chair is...

It is not the most obvious home for the savings of the West. A country that routinely sends bombers hurtling towards our air space, that refuses to extradite a suspected murderer, that harasses British officials with trumped-up accusations, that challenges the West on countless foreign policy issues. Oh yes, and one that defaulted on its own debts less than ten years ago. Yet last year Russia was by far the most successful nation in greater Europe in raising new equity investment. Companies there gathered in $29 billion through flotations last year, making the country the biggest recipient of new share...

Just An Understudy? Some believe Medvedev will simply do Putin's bidding as president In a high-ceilinged room at the St. Petersburg mayor's office in 1992, overlooking St. Isaac's Square and its fine equestrian statue of Tsar Nicholas I, two small men shared one big desk. The older man was a tough ex-KGB lieutenant colonel named Vladimir Putin. He ran the mayor's commercial dealings and was always "very business-like and serious," says Dmitry Lenkov, a member of the city council who was a frequent visitor. Putin's deputy, a quiet young lawyer, was named Dmitry Medvedev. He was a "hardly noticeable gray...

The man tipped to become the next Russian president has vowed his country will "stick to" its support for Serbia in opposing Kosovo's independence. Deputy PM Dmitry Medvedev was in Belgrade for talks with Serb President Boris Tadic and PM Vojislav Kostunica. Although its focus is mainly economic, the visit is seen as a sign of support for Serbia's view on Kosovo, the BBC's Bethany Bell in Belgrade says. Kosovo's declaration of independence sparked protests in Serbia last week. HAVE YOUR SAY Both Serbia and Russia should tone down their aggressive rhetoric Mat, Ljubljana, Slovenia Send us your comments"We proceed...

MOSCOW - The Jewish community of Russia is worried over a rumor campaign by nationalist parties claiming that Dmitri Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin's handpicked successor, is Jewish. Russian Jewish leaders declined to comment on the rumors officially, fearing to lend them credibility. Off the record, however, one said: "I pray it isn't true, because it would only make trouble, for him and for us." Medvedev, who recently told a Russian weekly that he was baptized into the Russian Orthodox Church at age 23, has not commented on these rumors. But Russian Internet sites are full of reports about his alleged...

Nikolai Bondarik fears that there will be dire consequences for Russia if the heavily favored front-runner in the presidential election, First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, wins as expected on March 2. With Medvedev in power, Russia's natural resources will be plundered by foreign investors, Moscow will alienate its traditional Arab allies, and tens of thousands of Israelis will become managers at key Russian institutions, "including the police, army and secret services," Bondarik said by telephone from St. Petersburg. The reason for Bondarik's alarm: He is firmly convinced that Medvedev is Jewish. "We are categorically against him because he is...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he saw no need to hang his successor's portrait in his office once he steps down as Russia's president. It is accepted etiquette in Russia for all officials to hang up a portrait of the head of state. But Putin's protege Dmitry Medvedev is expected to win next month's election while he stays on as a very influential prime minister. "In order to establish my relationship with Dmitry Anatolyevich (Medvedev) I won't need to hang his portrait on my wall if he is elected president," Putin said. "As for my relations with...

It was a typical December night in Moscow. The cold was biting, the snow thick and dry. In the Federal Security Service's headquarters on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad, hundreds of intelligence officers met as they did every year to celebrate the founding of the Cheka, the Soviet secret police. Champagne glasses tinkled as the officers spoke in jubilant tones. Classical music played softly in the background. The hall grew quiet as Vladimir Putin -- the former FSB director who had been appointed prime minister a few months earlier -- stood to speak. "Dear comrades," Putin said. "I would like to announce to...

Copy China and invest abroad, says Medvedev By Catherine Belton in Moscow Published: January 31 2008 19:19 | Last updated: January 31 2008 19:19 Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s most likely next president, called on Russian business people on Thursday to copy China and go on a global buying spree of foreign companies to bolster the economy and cut dependence on technology from abroad. In his first speech to Russian big business since being named by Vladimir Putin as his preferred successor, Mr Medvedev pledged Kremlin support for companies seeking assets abroad. “This is a very important task. The majority of powerful...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's likely future president, Dmitry Medvedev, does not have a car of his own and the only family transport is his wife's nine-year-old Volkswagen Golf, an official income declaration showed on Monday. The modest means set out in the declaration submitted to election officials contrast sharply with the funds he controls: he is chairman of gas giant Gazprom which in 2006 notched up a net profit of about $13 billion. President Vladimir Putin, who has to step down as president at the end of his second term in May, backed Medvedev last month as his favored candidate...

Putin may become Gazprom chairman Dec 21, 2007 MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin may become the next chairman of Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom when he steps down following a presidential election in March, Vedomosti business daily reported on Friday. The newspaper cited two sources close to Gazprom and one source close to first deputy prime minister and current Gazprom chairman Dmitry Medvedev, whom Putin has designated as a preferred candidate to succeed him. Gazprom and the Kremlin declined immediate comments. Medvedev has said he would step down as the chairman of Gazprom, the world's largest gas producer and...

Dmitry Medvedev, named by President Vladimir Putin as his preferred successor, said on Tuesday that he would propose that Putin becomes prime minister in a future government. Medvedev also made clear in a brief televised statement that his nomination was linked to the need for continuity of Putin's policies.

via translation - MOSCOW - Dmitry Medvedev, candidate of presidential power to the Russian in 2008, called Tuesday for Putin to the post of prime minister once from the Kremlin. "It is important to maintain the effectiveness of the team. So I think important for our country to remain extremely important to the post of executive power, the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin," he said in a affidavit to Russian television.

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin on Monday expressed support for First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as his successor, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. The report ends months of intense speculation over whom Putin would support to run in the March 2 presidential elections. But it does not answer wider questions about what Putin himself will do once he steps down.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. plans to site parts of a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic are "politically dangerous", former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said on Saturday. "From my point of view the missile defense system is politically dangerous. It is perceived as an attempt to isolate Russia, which is not in Europe's political interests," said Schroeder, who is a personal friend of President Vladimir Putin. "It is Germany's responsibility ... to persuade the United States to abandon these plans," he said at a round table discussion with political analysts and journalists. Schroeder, who formed his friendship...

The triumphant presentation President Vladimir Putin delivered to journalists Thursday, February 1, highlighted truly impressive achievements of his tenure. He pointed out that Russia’s close to 7 percent GDP growth in 2006 is based not only on high energy prices, but also domestic demand for consumer products and capital goods. Putin bragged – justifiably – that capital flight from Russia is replaced by $10 billion in portfolio investments inflows and $31 billion in foreign direct investment. This rosy picture, however, cannot distract foreign investors from understandable anxiety: how the post-Putin succession affects their current and future assets and cash flows....

Critics say hardball tactics could come back to haunt Moscow. Alexander Medvedev went to Davos with the tall task of convincing European leaders and others that they have nothing to fear from the state-controlled Russian energy giant Gazprom. The company enraged European leaders earlier this month when it temporarily shut off the flow of oil through a key pipeline due to a dispute with Belarus. The move came a year after it had similarly clamped off natural gas supplies due to a dispute with Ukraine. "I'd like to assure all of the people in this room there is no reason...

On 16 June, Gazprom’s Board of Directors finally agreed on the mechanism of buyout of the 10.74% of its shares necessary for the state to become the controlling shareholder in this monopolist company (until that time, the state had controlled 39% of shares in Gazprom). The decision is an element of the consistently implemented plan of strengthening the state’s position in economy. At the same time, it ends a subsequent stage of the battle between Kremlin-based coteries for control of the strategic assets in the energy sector. This battle has laid bare the divisions and conflicting interests among influential Kremlin...