WILL THE YOUNGER BEAR* GROW?

Should you have sighed with relief when the successor to the Russian throne was appointed on 10 December, please refocus. The most important announcement came one day later, on December 11: the president-to-be Dmitry Medvedev suggested that once he becomes elected, Putin should become the Prime Minister. For one day, there remained a possibility that, even though without proper elections, the power in Russia would experience a fresh, maybe even a more liberal wave. Medvedev's statement has ruled out that possibility.

Naturally, there is still a chance for Putin to leave. But that would be very difficult for him to do if he wants to maintain the status quo in terms of power distribution among the clans guarding the natural resources and the military. The system he has created is increasingly basing itself on feudal interdependencies among its players (in 2007, Russia has sunk to the 143 rd place out of 180 in the Transparency Int (TI) corruption rating, sharing the same corruption level as Gambia, Indonesia and Togo), their fear of losing literally everything (including the risk of going to jail), lack of healthy competition and inability to develop without direct involvement of the higher-ups. One either maintains the control or loses it and watches the rules change, most often with grave consequences for oneself. The way things go in the civilized world, when the change of power only means the change of players and not the rules of the game is out of question in today's Russia .

This is why Medvedev should currently be viewed more as a nominal figure. Something like the British Queen, if you like. Only the Russian regime will not resemble a constitutional monarchy. Now more than ever in the past few years has it moved close to becoming a true dictatorship, should Putin agree to occupy Prime Minister's post.

So far, Putin has called the option “realistic”, if two conditions are fulfilled. Condition number one was that the party he supported, the United Russia, would win the parliamentary elections. Condition number two was that “a decent, efficient, modern person becomes president, someone with whom it would be easy to work”. In my view, both conditions seem to have been fulfilled.

Within the above plan, once Medvedev becomes president, it is of course crucial that he personally remains true to Putin, his friend and mentor of 17 years. There are experts who say that a new president in Russia needs something like two years to regroup the elites and gain enough back-up to be independent from his predecessor. The same experts say that if Putin has made up his mind not to leave, he would try to prevent Medvedev from staying president for longer than two years.

This is partially why so much haste has been made with the suggestion that Putin becomes the Prime Minister. Alternatively, the public would slowly lose interest in him as someone who had announced he was definitely stepping down. The new parliament seemingly so fanatical about Putin, in reality will support anyone with true power. The only ideology and programme of the overwhelming majority in that parliament is loyalty to the powerful.

There still remains a possibility that Medvedev at some point chooses to cut his puppet strings, but will he have the time to gain strength to do so? Besides, all speculations about him being more liberal than Putin are based solely on his words, not actions.

* Medvedev's last name in Russian means “bear”, the symbol of Putin's party United Russia .