Below The Beltway

Russian President Vladimir Putin has picked a man who has never been elected to office to succeed him when his term ends next year:

MOSCOW. Dec. 10 — Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that he will support first deputy prime minister Dmitry Medvedev as president, ending years of speculation about his choice and all but ensuring that his longtime associate and young protege will succeed him in the Kremlin next year.

“I have known him very closely for more than 17 years and I completely and fully support this proposal,” said Putin, speaking to the leaders of four political parties, including the ruling United Russia party, who said they would nominate Medvedev as their candidate.

Not surprisingly, Putin picked someone who is not only close to him, but who also owes him alot:

Medvedev owes his entire political life to Putin, and the two are said to have a father-son relationship, according to Olga Kryshtanovskaya, director of the Moscow-based Center for the Study of Elites.

“It’s almost a monarchial succession,” she said in an interview. “He nominated his ‘adopted’ son.”

(…)

Medvedev’s star, which was considered high earlier in the year, appeared to have faded in recent weeks. Speculation about Putin’s successor had focused on two perceived hard-liners — the newly appointed prime minister, Viktor Zubkov, and another first deputy prime minister and former KGB agent, Sergey Ivanov.

But Putin, in the end, turned not only to a trusted adviser but the one with whom he has the closest personal bond, a man he addresses with the diminutive, Dima.

“Let’s agree that there is such a thing as comradeship,” said Putin in a book-length interview called “First Person,” published at the start of his first term. “I get that feeling with Dima Medvedev.”

Some analysts have suggested that Medvedev is so submissive to his mentor that he’d even step aside as President of Russia at some point in the future to let Putin return:

“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 Ekho Moskvy radio Monday.

So what’s Putin’s plan ? Control things from the background with Medvedev as the putative, but ultimately powerless, President ? Return to power in a few years ? Or, does he have something else in mind ?

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin and other top Russia and Belarus officials will consider next week a proposed framework for the long-debated merger of the two countries into a single state, officials said Thursday.

The unexpected move, coming at a time of uncertainty over Russia’s political future, raised speculation that Putin may seek to become leader of the new country created by the merger. That would permit him to step down as Russian president next May, as required by the constitution, but become chief of the enlarged state.

Belarus’ presidential office said Putin would attend a Dec. 13-14 meeting in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, that would focus on a draft constitution of a Russia-Belarus union. It gave no details, but any constitution would describe the union’s governmental structure.

Analysts and news organizations have speculated for years that Putin could become the president of a combined Russian-Belarusian state. But talks over the merger have been mired in disagreements, particularly over the status of Belarus in the new union.

Something tells me we’ll be paying attention to Russia a lot more in the next few years.