President Dmitry Medvedev

So now we know. It will be Dmitry Medvedev, not Sergei Ivanov (and not Vladimir Putin) who succeeds Vladimir Putin. Putin, it's just been announced, "fully supports" Medvedev's candidacy to replace him when he leaves office after his second term expires in the spring.

So all hail President Dmitry. There is, of course, the small matter of elections to be sorted out, but you can be sure that the Kremlin - unless this decision creates a major rift behind the red walls - will make sure Putin's man is elected. The liberal opposition is self-destructing anyway, choosing not one, but three candidates to run for the presidency in April.

So what can be deduced from this, in these first minutes after Putin's announcement? To me, it says that Putin, instead of choosing someone else from inside the siloviki, the cadre of security service veterans who run the country, has chosen someone personally loyal to him. Medvedev is not a chekist (ex-KGB agent) like Putin and Ivanov, he's a Putinist.

Medvedev has been at Putin's side since the early 1990s, when Putin was chief of staff to St. Petersburg mayor Anatoliy Sobchak and Medvedev was a foreign affairs advisor.

As Putin rose to power, Medvedev followed. First he was chief of staff to Putin after he was appointed prime minister in 1999 by Boris Yeltsin. Then he ran Putin's 2000 presidential election campaign and afterwards became deputy chief of staff to President Vladimir. Next he was installed as chairman of the board at Gazprom, the giant gas company that Putin has turned into the Kremlin's most effective foreign policy tool.

When Alexander Voloshin quit as Putin's chief of staff over the sordid Mikhail Khodorkovsky affair in 2003, Medvedev was brought in to replace him and get the Kremlin back on course. Two years ago, in the first hint that this moment might eventually come, he was made First Deputy Prime Minister (along with Ivanov).

What does all this mean? Two things.

The first is relations between Russia and the West may yet recover some. The 42-year-old Medvedev is seen as more liberal and pro-Western than the hardline Ivanov. Ivanov was the tough guy you always saw in military fatigues noddling gravely at the testing of new Russian military hardware. Medvedev was the mild-mannered man in the suit that you rarely saw at all until he was made deputy PM in an effort to build up his public persona (although he was theoretically also the guy who made the decision to turn off Gazprom's taps to Ukraine and Belarus when those countries bucked the Kremlin's will...).

The second is that real power will remain in the hands of our old friend, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Putin's choice was between a man unquestionably loyal to him (Medvedev) and a man unquestionably loyal to the system (Ivanov). He chose the former.

Medvedev owes Putin everything. If Putin asks him to do something - to make him prime minister, or even to relinquish the presidency because Vladimir Vladimirovich misses the comforts of the Kremlin - he'll do it.

The eternal (losing) candidate

What is Grigoriy Yavlinsky thinking? Can he really be this vain and out of touch with reality?

The Moscow Times is reporting today that Yavlinsky, who ran and lost (badly) for the presidency in 1996 and 2000 is planning another run in 2008.

Just two weeks ago I was celebrating the fact that Russia's liberal opposition had finally got its act together and was apparently ready to throw its support behind a single candidate, former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov. I tempered my enthusiasm by noting we hadn't yet heard from Yavlinsky, but assumed that even he wasn't blind enough to the best interests of the country to mess up what was clearly a good thing.

The question Russians have to answer in the next election should be a clear one: "Is the country heading the right way under Putin and Putinism, or has too much been sacrificed in the name of stability?" A fair and open race that boiled down to the Kremlin's candidate (who increasingly appears to be deputy prime minister and ex-KGB man Sergei Ivanov) against Kasyanov, representing The Other Russia, would put that question provocatively before the public.

(For more on Ivanov, see the profile in London's Sunday Times newspaper. It's written by Mark Franchetti, who is one of the best scribes in the Moscow-based foreign press corps.)

Yavlinsky getting involved, however, will allow the Kremlin to get away with portraying the various liberal candidates (Yukos chairman Viktor Gerashchenko and Soviet-era dissident Vladimir Bukovsky are also both toying with the idea of candidacy) as a bunch of Yeltsin era rabble. Look for the Communists and the far right to be built up so that the Kremlin can once more convince the West that its Putinism or the real baddies.

Yavlinsky, in his two presidential runs, has received 7.4 and 5.8 per cent of the vote. Those numbers will never make him president, but that support might mean the difference between Kasyanov getting into a second round against whoever the Kremlin puts forward.

Yavlinsky is a decent man, who might have been Russian president if the Russian people admired him even half as much as the Western media did in the 1990s. Now, however, someone has to convince him that his moment is well past and it's time to put the country ahead of his ego.

While I'm talking about the 2008 presidential race, I should note that Kommersant had an interesting piece over the weekend that suggested that it might not be Ivanov who ends up as the Kremlin's chosen one. The article quotes Kremlin aide Igor Shuvalov suggesting that "Operation Successor" may yet yield someone other than Ivanov or Dmitriy Medvedev, the other presumed frontrunner for Putin's blessing.

"People are talking of two potential candidates, but my president might yet surprise everyone, and by the end of this year you might learn of yet another potential figure," Shuvalov said. "We have two active individuals - they are the senior deputy prime ministers, with different spheres of responsibility. Both are very liberal-minded, although one is a former KGB officer. Either of them could win. Personally, however, I think that yet another figure may emerge."

Very interesting. Though I have to wonder if he isn't talking about Vladimir Vladimirovich himself.