By Bridget Johnson, your guide to Journalism

Popular Russian President Vladimir Putin is termed out of office this year, but there’s little chance of him technically relinquishing his political power. With his hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, all but assured of victory on March 2 (a handful of opposition candidates including the Other Russia party’s Garry Kasparov were disqualified from running), Putin has been assured the prime minister’s post. And Putin swears that his shifting of job titles will be no demotion. From the International Herald Tribune:

“Putin (on Thursday) reiterated his intention to become prime minister and lead the government of his presumptive successor, Dmitri Medvedev, a politician whose career he has sponsored. He also implied that Medvedev would follow the course that he had set.


‘The president is the guarantor of the Constitution,’ Putin said. ‘He sets the main directions for internal and external policies. But the highest executive power in the country is the Russian government, led by the premier.’ He added that he planned to be the prime minister throughout Medvedev’s administration, as long as ‘I am meeting goals that I myself have fixed.’”

Well, that settles that! Though this begs the question: How many can name the current Russian prime minister? Viktor Zubkov has not set the direction of Russia, nor does his name even make the news west of Europe. It has been the Putin Show for the past eight years, and it will continue to be for the presidency of Medvedev — last week, Putin laid out his vision for Russia through the year 2020.

But what exactly does that mean for Russia? I remembered a conversation I had a few months ago with Robert Amsterdam, counsel for imprioned Yukos oil tycoon — and Putin foe — Mikhail Khodorkovsky:

“Look at what Putin is doing: He’s literally eating up all political space with people trying to speculate about what he’s going to do. It’s brilliant. He’s got the whole agenda covered: One week they’re talking about prime minister, the other week they’re talking about him as head of the supreme
court; I mean, he’s got the whole political group guessing and anniversaries like that of Anna Politkovskaya, who was a friend of mine who was murdered a year ago, these kinds of things just go because everyone is focusing their attention on Putin.


…I’ve had people in other governments tell me that they’ve never seen anything like it. For instance, there’s more Russian spies in Berlin now than at any time in the Cold War. Even when (former German Chancellor Gerhard) Schroeder was schmoozing with Putin, he was under attack in his own country because of the massive influx of spies.


…It is the most corrupt regime in Russian history — which says a hell of a lot.”