BELARUSIAN INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC STUDIES, NASHA NIVA WEEKLY, MINSK

Presidential elections in Russia have been an event of international importance. A succession scenario had been implemented, although the former President, Vladimir Putin, still controls power being the Prime-Minister and the leader of the largest faction in the State Duma. What does this mean for Belarus?

VLADIMIR ZHARIKHIN

The main result to be drawn from the informal CIS summit is that under the new Russian President Dmitry Medvedev Russia's policy in the post-Soviet space will not change drastically.

ALEKSANDR RAHR

Vladimir Putin’s visit to France is quite unique. In a week new Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev is to arrive in France and Germany. It looks like Prime Minister Putin overshadows President Medvedev. During his visit to Paris Vladimir Putin shows the world leaders that he is in charge of the Russian foreign policy.

ANDREY GROZIN

Medvedev’s visit to Kazakhstan was fruitful. Some said it would be a reconnaissance and ceremonial visit. But as a matter of fact, a lot of practical issues were addressed, certain agreements were reached.

ANDREY KOKOSHIN, FIRST DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF THE STATE DUMA COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND HIGH TECHNOLOGIES; FYODOR LUKYANOV, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OF "RUSSIA IN GLOBAL AFFAIRS" MAGAZINE

"The change consists in the fact that Russia can no longer influence the domestic policy of its neighbors. When that became clear Russia chose the pragmatic approach," Fyodor Lukyanov.

MARIA BOTCHKOVA, DMITRY UDALOV

While the whole world is watching the development of the American presidential race, the Russian president elections seem to be simple: the Kremlin’s candidate Dmitry Medvedev is supposed to win it.

LEV GUDKOV, BORIS DUBIN

Most respondents and those who intend to vote are convinced that the outcome of the March election is predetermined, that the decision is taken by the official quarters and what is going on is nothing but imitation of the election.

OLEG REUT

All the September 24 appointments were aimed at weakening the Prime Minister’s position and diluting his powers to a considerable degree.

Russia’s victory over Georgia in the armed conflict in South Ossetia, the diplomatic maneuvers which followed the conflict and showed that the Western community cannot (and does not want to) oppose Russia in a serious way, and Dmitry Medvedev’s bold statements at the Valdai International Discussion Club make the President of Russia ‘a hero of the day’.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is out of luck again. This time he was refused parole despite he had seemed to have good chances for it.  The authorities made it clear that there was every reason for hoping… Being a state’s prisoner, the disgraced tycoon hoped that the new president of Russia would release him.

The English military leader John Talbot died at the Battle of Castillon, because he had entered the battlefield wearing no armor. Sir John understood quite well, what could be caused by such a neglect of own safety, but he had no choice. Shortly before that, when he was released from captivity, he promised “never to wear armor against the French King again.”

Who would think that a banal song contest like Eurovision can trigger new round of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. When Kyiv won the right to host the finals of the 50^th Eurovision contest, Moscow was sick with envy and spent millions to catch up with the Western neighbor. It cost Russia several expensive but futile attempts. And finally at Eurovision 2008 Russian pop singer Dima Bilan won the contest.

Despite the propaganda declarations that Russia has finally “risen from the knees” and “returned its status of a superpower”, the Kremlin’s foreign policy is still characterized by inconsistency and complete absence of strategic planning. True, there has been perceptible change since the 1990s – the Kremlin has become more independent in decision-making, the Russian elite are aware of the state interests.

Once I used to think that the Russian authorities possessed an exclusive talent to choose the worst solutions of all possible. I later realized that the decisions they had made were the best of all possible, while I simply couldn’t grasp the root of the matter. The point is that the Russian authorities are motivated not by the abstract ideas. They are governed by their own interests and those of the ruling class.

The last two weeks Russia’s mass media have been chewing over the information about president Putin’s divorce and further inevitable marriage with the Olympic gymnast Alina Kabaeva. Strictly speaking the rumor is not new, it has been circulating for over six months. What was new is the unexpected and massive interest of the media to the old odd noise.

Did the presidential election in Russia reveal anything about the country? Well in some way… Valentina Matviyenko, governor of Saint Petersburg, revealed her feminine clairvoyance – her first revelation after the election results had been made public was that she had had an intuitive awareness of who would become Russia’s new President. What a surprise!

The confrontation between employees and administration of the “Ford” plant in Vsevolozhsk ended in compromise. The salary was raised by 16-20% depending on the category of employee, rather than by one third, as the trade union demanded. Using the boxing terminology, one may say that for strikers it was the “victory on points”.

I was skeptic about the last year’s decision of the International Committee of the World Social Forum (WSF) to hold a worldwide day of protest on January 26. And I was not the only one – my colleague from Latin America commented that “it will be too cold in Russia, and in Brazil there will be a carnival”.

Welcome to 2008! This year we are to get a new president, further pension and housing and public utilities reforms in Russia; new administration in the USA... Perish the thought, but apart from that we might also get world economic crisis. Really, perish this thought, because forecasting economic recession is not an easy task.

And so we are told that the Russian President Vladimir Putin stays in power. But if he becomes Prime Minister, what will Dmitry Medvedev do? Will he indeed become President?! Such reshuffles normally end in political instability and social woes. I can only hope that the both don’t mean what they’ve claimed.
The Putin-Medvedev tandem is not a bad strategic alliance in terms of the forthcoming presidential election.

The Central Election Commission has counted the vote returns – the parties that were meant to make it into the State Duma are already there occupying their places. Accuracy of the forecast given before the election by the Kremlin-friendly experts, keeps one guessing if the whole costly procedure was aimed at implementing into life a cooked-up scheme.

The trick is, whatever you do, it won’t affect Russia’s present political system. It reminds me of a machine to play coin flipping thought out by a Polish philosopher Jan Kott. The machine counts your answers and always wins. The only way for a human being to make the chances equal is to give random answers. Still, you can only end in a draw.

Since no puppet opposition has been created, the bureaucrats will work with CPRF. With Communists as the only opposition force, the new Russian Duma will be an apolitical institution without ideology. This invalid apolitical body will lay basis of the new parliamentary system in Russia…a system with minimum political substance. Well, this time form will prevail over substance.

The American society wants changes and is afraid of changes. Americans want the politicians to rise to a challenge. The Russian society is also afraid of changes, but doesn’t want to change at all. Russians don’t demand their politicians to do anything about it – people are afraid of the authorities’ reaction.

Don’t you fancy that the new Cabinet will bring about new policy. What can be revised is the status quo in the Russian high-rank bureaucracy. In the days of Fradkov’s premiership the Cabinet fell far from the ideal of a close-knit team or top-down management system. Each ministry had its own priorities and goals, with Premier Fradkov being only a coordinator.

Under the circumstances, telling stories about five mysterious candidates and keeping the nation and the bureaucrats themselves in the dark is irresponsible and testifies the Kremlin’s inability to control the situation. From the political point of view the situation is critical.

Why would the State Duma deputy Aleksey Mitrofanov change sides leaving Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) for Sergey Mironov’s “Fair Russia”? Given Mitrofanov’s public image that can only deter voters, it is very doubtful that “Fair Russia” will manage to capitalize on this acquisition. Mitrofanov was fine as Zhirinovsky’s right hand warming up the public every time before the great clown took the lead himself.

The problem is that Vladimir Putin is the only official in Russia who has real authority or at least popularity at the level of the whole nation. No other bureaucrat can pretend to grade up to the incumbent president in popular support ratings. Resentment against the bureaucrats is the dominant social feeling. 

For the last couple of years, much ink has been spilled by hacks and pundits on the ‘2008 problem’. The problem being that the Russian constitution only lets a president rule for two consecutive terms, so president Putin is obliged to step down, even though he enjoys approval ratings of over 80%. Russia now seems remarkably calm about 2008 presidential elections.

I don’t understand why Vladimir Putin feels the need to be so belligerent and obnoxious in international relations. OK, he’s aggressively asserting Russia’s new economic power, and it plays well with some insecure people at home who prefer to be ‘feared’ by foreign powers rather than free in their own country. But there’s no need to be so belligerent, and ultimately it defeats his own aims.

Three opposition parties have contested results of the Russia’s March 11 regional elections pleading numerous violations. The liberal Union of Right Forces questions the results of the elections to the Moscow legislature. The Communists are discontent with the results of the elections to the Dagestan Parliament scoring barely above the minimum threshold of 7%. LDPR insists that the results were fabricated all in regions.

The democratic wing of the United Russia party keeps on rectifying the Law on elections. The recently proposed amendments to the Russian Federal Law on basic guarantees of electoral rights threaten to lock up the vox populi into one throat. And you know whose.

Russian corporate enterprises are on the rise: share prices are growing, profits are excessive and foreign investors are eager to put money into the Russian assets. But strangely, the share price explosion has nothing to do with efficiency improvement.

The 2008 presidential election poses for the Kremlin a problem with an unambiguous solution. It’s high time to look around for Vladimir Putin’s successor. At the same time there is nobody to succeed to Putin.

I don’t envy Putin’s successor. He will come to power despite the fact that the majority of Russians want Putin to stay on. He will have the irritating presence of Putin, still young and healthy, somewhere behind him. He will no doubt hear constant negative comparisons between his rule and the golden age of Putinism, and constant calls for Vladimir Vladimirovich to return and lead the country back to glory.

I managed to sneak into a private speech that Dmitri Medvedev, deputy prime minister of Russia, gave to around 100 editors at the World Editors Forum in Moscow. He launched into a rather boring speech about the Russian economy, when the interpreter ear-pieces broke down. So his speech was abandoned and we went straight to questions from the floor instead.

Regrettably enough, Ukraine’s image created by the Russian mass media and Russia’s image as created by the Ukrainian mass media are far from the truth. So what is Russia really like today?

Will the change in the balance of forces between the federal center and constituent members of the Russian Federation that began this decade end with a slashing of regional governments’ powers and thus inevitably produce a frustrating reaction on their part?

The president has named a successor who embodies two key qualities. Medvedev is both loyal enough to allow Putin to continue de facto rule, and weak enough to avoid upsetting the delicate balance among the warring clans of security-service veterans.

Central to Moscow’s agenda is a proposal to weaken the OSCE’s election monitoring work, which Russia blames for helping to usher in pro-Western governments in Ukraine and Georgia.

Russia is run by a collective leadership -- the Kremlin Corporation's board of directors, so to speak. Putin is the front man and public face for an elite group of seasoned bureaucrats.

The idea is to create a sort of super-prime minister role for Putin. Putin can then turn over the diminished presidency to Zubkov or another obedient successor.

Zubkov's main value for Putin may well be that he probably knows more than any other person about the location and movements of legal and illegal assets in Russia.

Despite the flurry of activity in recent days surrounding the December elections for the State Duma, the March 2008 presidential succession remains firmly at the center of Russia's political agenda.

Eurasian Home publishes the results of the "G7 Citizens Critical of Putin’s Impact on Russian Democracy: BBC poll " conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) and the international polling firm GlobeScan for the BBC World Service.