Putin Anoints Successor To Russian Presidency

The choice of Medvedev is unlikely to end speculation that Putin will ultimately resume the presidency. "If Putin wants to return in two, three years . . . Medvedev will be the person who will without a doubt give up the path for him," opposition politician Vladimir Ryzhkov said on Echo Moskvy radio Monday.

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But Bunin, of the Center for Political Technologies, argued that Medvedev would be "a real president," saying, "He is not a keeper of Putin's seat."

He added, however, "Of course, he will not be as powerful as Putin, at least not in his first term."

The only child of university professors, Medvedev entered Leningrad State University, Putin's alma mater, in 1982. He and Putin first worked together in the St. Petersburg city administration in the early 1990s.

Medvedev taught law at the university until 1999 when Putin, then prime minister, brought him to Moscow as deputy head of the government administration. Within a month, President Boris Yeltsin had resigned and Putin was propelled into the Kremlin. Medvedev went with him as deputy head of the administration, and he headed Putin's first election campaign in 2000.

Since 2000, Medvedev has also held senior positions at Gazprom, the state-controlled natural gas behemoth that has been at the heart of bitter disputes between Russia and its neighbors over pricing. The company has been accused of using energy cutoffs and price increases to punish neighbors straying from what the Kremlin regards as a Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union.

For eight years, Medvedev has been an unswerving Putin loyalist and, when called upon, a defender of Kremlin policies. He has said Gazprom is merely trying to wean former Soviet republics off unsustainable subsidies and encourage them to adopt free-market principles.

At the height of the widely criticized prosecution of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the dismantling of his company, Yukos, Medvedev defended the courts as "genuinely independent."

Until now, Medvedev had refused to address whether he would be a candidate for president, so little is known about his specific program for Russia.

But he has dismissed the term "sovereign democracy," coined by a Kremlin official to explain how Russia's heavily centralized system differs from Western democratic models. "I don't like this term," he said in an interview this year. "Playing up one feature of a full-fledged democracy, namely the supremacy of state authorities . . . is excessive and even harmful."

He has spoken of his modest background. "Just like everyone else, I lived in the kinds of apartments that used to be given to Soviet citizens, first a communal one and later a cramped apartment in St. Petersburg," he said in a television interview last year.

As first deputy prime minister, Medvedev was placed in charge of major social spending programs designed to improve health care, housing, education and agriculture. State-run television has regularly featured glowing footage of him cutting ribbons and handing out cash, including rewards for Russian couples who have more than one child.

"The image created for Medvedev in 2007 was the image of Santa Claus," said Kryshtanovskaya, of the Center for the Study of Elites. "A person who has a big sack and is traveling around the regions and giving presents to everyone."