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Vladimir Putin has launched an active PR campaign. The crisis is ending, and now the 2012 presidential elections are on the agenda.

Newsweek's interlocutors agree that Vladimir Putin's summer PR campaign began with a surprise visit to the Perekrestok supermarket at the end of June. Putin later explained: he wanted to figure out on the spot what was going on with prices, so that his brains would not be “composted” in the White House. Managing director of the X5 company that owns Perekrestok, Yuri Kobaladze, claims that he was not in the know. He was on his way to the White House for a meeting on the trade law, and then First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov called him with the news that the prime minister had decided to consolidate theory with practice. “You’re going to the store,” Zubkov told Kobaladze. “Who else will we take? - asked the director. “I don’t want to die alone.”

It was Putin who was hesitant and nervous before: last fall, he did not appear in public for almost two months, trying to understand what was happening with the economy. Now he feels much more confident: he sees that the crisis is subsiding. People trust him no less than before the crisis; there are even signs of growth, sociologists say. And if the economy is going up, then nothing can stop him from returning to the Kremlin in three years. Now this is the most likely scenario, says a source close to the Kremlin.

GOOD FRAME

Everyone can see that Putin is promoting himself more and more actively. He prohibits bankers from going on vacation, scolds officials at government meetings, promises increased pensions, and personally supervises the investigation into the disaster at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station. Putin has lunch in a barley field with machine operators, meets with bikers, and poses naked to the waist against the backdrop of Tuvan rocks.

Newsweek's interlocutors emphasize that very often there is no practical sense in the prime minister's actions - it is just about playing for the public. Now many meetings with the participation of the prime minister are held without pre-prepared protocols on decisions, says a government source. This didn't happen before. It is obvious to him that the goals of these meetings are purely propaganda. No, this is because they do not have time to prepare decisions in connection with the crisis, another White House official objects, and the prime minister then gives verbal instructions.

A source close to Baselcement, which owes money to workers in the city of Pikalevo, says that Putin’s visit to Pikalevo in early June, where the prime minister got into trouble with the owner of the plant, Oleg Deripaska, was staged from beginning to end. In fact, Newsweek's interlocutor says, by Putin's visit the problems with salaries had already been resolved: the money was transferred to them the night before, and extras were invited for Putin's arrival - there were fewer dissatisfied people than was required for a spectacular picture.

Putin poses. One of the eyewitnesses to photographing the prime minister on vacation in Tuva in early August says that he had to cross the narrow, cold Khemchik River at least three times until he got a good shot of the butterfly swim. Officials help their boss. Putin’s vacation in Tuva was organized by the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Sergei Shoigu. It was he, the eyewitness says, who chose the tree that Putin later climbed and gave him a cowboy hat from the arsenal of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. The prime minister's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, says that filming in Tuva cannot be considered a photo shoot, because the prime minister is always accompanied by a personal photographer and cameraman.

On the eve of this filming, Putin descended in a submersible to the bottom of Lake Baikal. In fact, there were two bathyscaphes: in one there were Putin and the pilot, in the other there were television cameramen. The Public Opinion Foundation then checked whether people liked it or not. 45% approved the descent, 7% condemned it. Among those who approve, the most popular answer is: this means that Putin cares about everything, the owner must know everything. The head of the fund, Alexander Oslon, explains: those who support the prime minister will approve of everything he does. What exactly he does, Oslon continues, is not so important for people, it is important for them to understand that he is acting: “If he disappears from TV, then there will be questions about where he went.”

COMPETITION ELEMENTS

Newsweek's interlocutors name several reasons for Putin's increased activity. No, this is not an election campaign as such, says Evgeny Gontmakher from the Institute of Contemporary Development; rather, Putin is conducting a kind of psychotherapy with the population, trying to calm them down during the crisis. The thing is, says a source close to the Kremlin, that Putin is simply jealous of Medvedev. “There is an element of competition,” confirms Newsweek's government source.

Putin often acts as if he is answering to Medvedev. At the beginning of July, Medvedev held a teleconference with the Seliger-2009 forum, where young pro-government activists have been gathering for many years. Three weeks later, Putin arrived at Seliger. Newsweek knows that his aides persuaded him to choose a different route, but Putin himself decided - namely Seliger. On July 13, Medvedev went to South Ossetia. A month later, Putin paid a visit to Abkhazia: formally - for business reasons, in reality - only to answer Medvedev, says a source close to the Kremlin.

This has already happened. Newsweek wrote last summer how Putin made sure not to give in to Medvedev: Medvedev signed an anti-corruption plan - Putin immediately, in a symmetrical response, allocated funds for the Anti-Terror program. Medvedev met with party leaders, and Putin immediately received them. Then the fact was that he was uncomfortable in the new place. Since then, Putin, of course, has gotten used to it, but tension between him and Medvedev still remains, Newsweek sources say. Recently, they spent a special day together in Sochi - to show that everything is fine with each other and the tandem is strong. We watched football and played badminton.

This time the reason could be that Medvedev is also trying to act more actively, and Putin is reacting in this way. Medvedev is pursuing regional policy quite consistently - he is replacing governors. He places his people carefully while his priority is the judicial system, says political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky. Recently, instead of Yuri Kalinin - associated with Igor Sechin - the Federal Penitentiary Service was headed by Alexander Reimer, a close acquaintance of the head of the Ministry of Justice Alexander Konovalov, a Medvedev associate.

Medvedev is holding informal business negotiations with Angela Merkel, and he, simply by status, received Barack Obama in the Kremlin when he first came to Moscow in early July. And Obama himself made it clear that he preferred to deal with Medvedev rather than with Putin. Medvedev himself decided to sever relations with Viktor Yushchenko, says a source close to the Kremlin, and of the two texts of the statement prepared for him, in which he refused to send an ambassador to Kiev, he chose the harshest one.

HARDWARE OVERLAYS

Medvedev may be active, but there is no real change in the balance of power between him and Putin, says analyst Nikolai Petrov of the Carnegie Center. He means that Putin - and this is obvious to everyone - plays the main role in the tandem, and Medvedev does not show in any way that he intends to change this picture. The fact that Putin’s comrade-in-arms, the head of Russian Technologies, Sergei Chemezov, was removed from participation in the presidential commission on economic modernization does not count, says a source close to the Kremlin: Chemezov really skipped work, and for Putin this is an absolutely normal argument.

Rumors that Medvedev is planning major changes in the administration have been circulating for a long time. But the president never replaced the head of his administration, Sergei Naryshkin, with whom, as several Newsweek sources say, he has grievances. The last piece of hardware was that Naryshkin put a visa on the bill on the creation of small enterprises at universities, without coordinating it with the government.

As a result, says a source in the Kremlin, the head of the Ministry of Finance, Alexei Kudrin, turned to Putin, who responded, and the Federation Council vetoed the law. Medvedev learned about the veto “literally on TV,” recalls a source close to the Kremlin. A few days later, by order of Medvedev, the deputies were called back from vacation, and they overcame the veto and adopted the law in the version endorsed by Naryshkin.

Most likely, Medvedev does not yet have a strong candidate for head of the administration. Vladislav Surkov could perhaps have hired him in this role; today he is Naryshkin’s first deputy and has a reputation as an effective manager. Surkov himself, all Newsweek’s interlocutors are sure, is striving to take this position. It is known that he is perhaps the only Kremlin official who has maintained good relations with both Medvedev and Putin. But a source close to the Kremlin believes that Putin will be against Surkov’s promotion: it may seem to him that Surkov is thus moving away from him.

One way or another, Medvedev does not make any sudden movements. Officials did not pay much attention to his recent rather harsh statement that the crisis had confirmed the extreme inefficiency of the Russian economy: they were already accustomed to Medvedev talking and Putin doing. Participants in the working groups of the commission on economic modernization, who are supposed to propose new solutions, are demotivated, says a source familiar with the situation: “Everyone knows that institutional changes are prohibited.”

So far, everything is fine with Vladimir Putin. Firstly, the economic crisis is ending, the price of oil is rising and there is something to fill the budget. Secondly, his project of joint rule with Medvedev has proven its viability: he has been prime minister for a year and a half now, and everyone is convinced that he has real power in Russia. The number of those who believe that Medvedev will pursue an independent policy is falling, says sociologist Alexei Levinson of the Levada Center.

There is an important question on which there is no solution, adds political scientist Dmitry Badovsky: who will go to the presidential elections? It can be assumed that there is no clear agreement between Putin and Medvedev on this matter, and this is causing tension between them to grow. As the crisis ceases to be the main political issue, this issue becomes the most important one.

Daria Guseva participated in the preparation of the article