Senior Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev announced yesterday that he has agreed to run for president. However, he set one condition for the incumbent: Vladimir Putin should become prime minister after the presidential election. Putin hasn't replied to his successor as yet, but others have been quick to comment on this proposal: the prime minister, regional leaders, state officials, party leaders, state corporation executives, religious and community activists, representatives of the business community and analysts. All are convinced that Putin will say yes.

Remember the usual Soviet propaganda line: “Cold War winds blow from the Potomac. The same wind goes through the hearts and minds of American imperialists who are planning the next campaign against peace-loving Politburo and CPSU Central Committee policies”. Nowadays you can find such language only in North Korean editorials but, unfortunately, though, both the Russian and Western media are still engaged in a similar war of words. The fact that the language they use is more sophisticated is little consolation. Nevertheless, one should admit that in the West, apart from Russia bashing, one can still find many articles critical of U.S. foreign policy and occasionally even some positive materials on Putin’s Russia. But the Russian media does not reciprocate: it is practically impossible to find anything positive about U.S. at all. I keep telling my Russian friends that Cold War mentality does not cover the whole spectrum of American society, and that there are many influential voices that do not see Russia as an enemy.   Not just Cold War winds are blowing but fresh ones too. When I run into an article that proves my point I send the link to my quite extensive mailing list. I can cite here some recent ones – by Robert Blackwill in the WSJ, or Norman Stone in the London Times, or by Mortimer Zuckerman in U.S. News and World Report, all of them calling for a more pragmatic U.S. policy towards Russia. Where are the Russian reciprocal steps of this kind, I kept yelling. Finally, I got what I asked for by being invited to defend U.S. policy on a leading TV talk show on Channel 1 which is something like ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FoxNews combined.   There were five of us U.S. defenders, including the editor-in-chief of the main opposition radio station Echo Moskvy against five harsh critics of the U.S. – and boy, were we beaten badly! Eighty-six percent of the audience voted for our opponents and only 14 percent took our side.   Of course, one could write it off by citing our incompetence. In all modesty, however, I do not believe that this was the main reason but rather the policy itself that we were trying to defend.  

The innocent may believe that the latest developments reinforce the liberal faction in the Kremlin but... But I don't know anyone in the Kremlin who obeys Medvedev. Sure, Sergei Ivanov was not promoted to successor because he demonstrated his aspirations in too open a manner. Medvedev proved smarter than that. Come to think of it, Putin is recommending a figurehead to us. Medvedev has never managed anything. He is just an official of the presidential administration. How do you expect him to govern the state?

President Vladimir Putin ended years of suspense Monday by naming a longtime aide, Dmitri Medvedev, as his chosen candidate to succeed him in presidential elections slated for March 2. "I have known him very closely for more than 17 years and I completely and fully support [his candidacy]," Mr. Putin said at a meeting with leaders of four pro-Kremlin parties, including the giant United Russia, which is expected to endorse him at its convention next week.

The Kosovo question is this week moving into its most difficult phase since the 1999 expulsion of the forces of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader. The United Nations-sponsored talks to bring together Serbia and Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leaders have, as expected, ended in failure. As Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary- general, was told in a report last week, there is no possibility of a deal between Belgrade, which insists Kosovo remains Serbia’s, and the ethnic Albanians demanding independence.

Russians support their president because he did something rare for a politician: He delivered. Russia today is a resurgent economic power, with the tenth-largest economy in the world. Eighty percent of the economy is privatized, according to the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation. And the country is flush with oil revenue, having overtaken Saudi Arabia as the world's leading producer of oil. The ruble is convertible again, a move designed to increase confidence among foreign investors, and it is once again the currency of choice. The Putin administration has instituted a flat, transparent income tax of 13 percent that Russians are actually paying -- in stark contrast to the situation of mutual suspicion a decade ago. Public debt is low and the stock market has taken off. Per-capita income and consumer spending are up sharply. And the middle class is growing rapidly while crime is down. Moscow was once an isolated bubble of prosperity, but as I saw on a recent business trip to 10 Russian cities, growth is now a national phenomenon. Every skyline bristled with cranes. And while outsiders see only a blow to democracy in Putin's decision to replace elected officials with appointed regional governors, Russians in the hinterlands admire him for taming the rogue fiefdoms that once plagued their existence. Now their taxes flow from their pockets to Moscow and back to their regions through federal investment in schools, hospitals, roads and bridges. Russians are also proud of their growing role in the global economy. Net foreign investment reached $60 billion in the first half of this year. Russian corporations are expanding abroad, and exports to the United States rose 30 percent last year.

The West won't complain too loudly or for too long about the elections. Russia's natural gas is still vital to Europe. The U.S. still hopes Putin can be a better partner on matters like sanctions against Iran. So expect the criticisms of the day to fade, paving the way for Putin and the West to continue talks about energy, trade, international diplomacy. Whatever the state of its internal politics, Russia, these days, is too important to leave out in the cold.

President Hugo Chávez has narrowly lost his latest attempt to push forward a revolutionary socialist agenda. His oil-rich country, still bent on humbling the United States, is an instructive place from which to view the world, so here are eight rules of modern political life as seen from Venezuela.

United Russia, the ideology-free party whose election list was headed by Vladimir Putin, was always going to win. Thanks to the championship of the president, it will now have a two-thirds majority in the state Duma. Only the rump of the once-mighty Communist party will provide an opposition. The question is whether the outcome will be a blessing for Mr Putin, and for Russia, or a curse. That depends on how the president chooses to play the hand he has won. So far he has proved a remarkable tactician, but it is unclear that he has a strategy. The first unknown is whether Mr Putin really wants to remain as a power in the system, either as prime minister, or as some sort of éminence grise behind the throne of the next president, or whether he actually wants to bow out gracefully. Most observers seem to think that he wants to carry on pulling the strings, or even to engineer a return to the presidency after a suitable delay (the constitution forbids more than two consecutive terms). Yet there are a number of well-informed analysts who remain convinced that he wants to quit, and has been persuaded to stay only to prevent an outbreak of vicious faction-fighting in the Kremlin.

President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party looked headed for a landslide victory in parliamentary elections Sunday, with early results suggesting the party would win nearly two-thirds of the State Duma’s 450 seats. With ballots from 34 percent of precincts counted, four parties looked set to hurdle the 7 percent barrier needed to gain entry to the Duma.