Medvedev: Our tandem with Putin is effective

Dmitry Medvedev considers his tandem with Vladimir Putin effective. According to Newsru.com, the president said this in an interview with the German magazine Spiegel.

Commenting on the assumption of German journalists regarding the fact that the participants of the tandem are focused on different layers of Russian society -traditionists and liberals, Medvedev noted: "As for personal preferences, each person has his own ideas about whose views, style of behavior, manner of presentation of the material is closer to him. This applies to us with Vladimir Putin."

"I would not want all of us at some point to be perceived as the elderly leaders of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, who in the same coats and hats went to the mausoleum, when it was impossible to understand which of them Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev and who Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov," the president said.

Reacting to the words that in the West, as well as the ex-president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev caused a bewilderment of Putin's statement regarding the upcoming presidential elections in 2012, Medvedev noted: "I would recommend to Mr. Gorbachev to read Putin's words."

"He only said the following: if at the time of the next presidential election Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev will still be attractive to the population as political figures, then in this case we will sit with him and discuss which of us go to the polls - so that we do not interfere with each other. He did not claim that we would determine with each other who would become the next president. This would be funny," Medvedev emphasized.