Keep Russia's Putin in charge, successor urges

MOSCOW — The soft-spoken bureaucrat just presented to the world as Russian President Vladimir Putin's hand-picked successor appeared on state television Tuesday with a deferential plea: The country must remain under Putin's leadership.

Dmitry Medvedev, the Kremlin-backed candidate expected to ascend to the presidency in March elections, called on Putin to head up the next government as prime minister. Only Putin, he said, will be able to ensure national stability.

With months to go before the election, Medvedev's statement appeared to cede a degree of future authority to Putin.

Putin himself did not respond Tuesday to Medvedev's suggestion. But some analysts believe the speech finally tipped the Kremlin's hand.

Using their monopoly of the airwaves, the Kremlin and Putin's United Russia Party in recent weeks have hammered home the message that Russia would return to the dark days of 1990s-era economic chaos if Putin left the political scene. While Putin is constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive four-year term, he and his backers have dangled several scenarios that would keep him in power.

One that surfaced last week would have Putin becoming the head of a European Union-like governmental structure that would unify Russia and Belarus. Putin is scheduled to fly to Minsk later this week to meet with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and is expected to discuss the Russia-Belarus union proposal.

But with Medvedev's speech Tuesday, it's clear that the most likely scenario that has emerged is one Putin himself suggested in October when he stunned the nation by announcing he could become prime minister.

Medvedev just received the golden nod on Monday, when Putin appeared on television to endorse his longtime confidante's run for the Kremlin.

But by suggesting that Russia cannot move forward without Putin's leadership, Medvedev has raised confounding questions about how power would be balanced between the two men.

Many analysts predict Medvedev, who rode Putin's political rise from St. Petersburg to Moscow and into the halls of the Kremlin, would happily allow Putin to call the shots.

"It's a hierarchical relationship. Putin has always been the boss of Mr. Medvedev," said Andrei Piontkovsky, a prominent Russian analyst who is a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute.

But others were skeptical. Once Medvedev is in the Kremlin, they said, he will come into his own, building a new team and eliminating enemies.

The Russian presidency has loomed as a nearly omnipotent office since Boris Yeltsin changed the constitution in the 1990s to amass power. The prime minister, on the other hand, has filled a comparatively weak, heavily bureaucratic role.

But since Putin's United Russia Party captured more than two-thirds of the seats in the lower house of parliament, the Kremlin could amend the constitution to beef up the premiership while whittling down presidential authority.

Information from the Chicago Tribune is included in this report.