“Yes, we can!”

Vladimir Putin held his last press conference as head of state with Russian and foreign journalists. It turned out that the president is generally pleased with himself and plans to work as prime minister for as long as Dmitry Medvedev will be president. If the people allow it, of course, he made a reservation. Foreign media, which regularly and with interest attend such events, concluded from these words that Mr. Putin will continue to rule the country from behind the back of the next president. Western publications are, however, confused by the future dual power in Russia. Newspaper analysts warn that Vladimir Putin's popularity, status and experience will provoke friction between the prime minister and the new president. They believe that Putin is unlikely to treat Medvedev as a boss - there have been no examples in recent Russian history of a leader going under the leadership of a former subordinate. However, many more foreigners were frightened by the foreign policy jokes of the Russian president. American journalists thought he had been scathing about his critics on the international stage and defied Washington by refusing to take back a threat to aim strategic missiles at the Czech Republic, Poland and Ukraine. The Italians decided that “Tsar Putin is threatening Kosovo and NATO,” and international affairs experts also explained to readers the phrase about shchi (cabbage soup is a popular cabbage soup in Russia, writes one of the newspapers).

Meanwhile, the State Duma of Russia, for the first time in its short history, took a vacation for two weeks, and not for one, as usual . Two weeks before the presidential elections are the last chord, deputies believe. As a rule, deputies took an additional regional week only for parliamentary elections. But now they have justified themselves by the fact that three presidential candidates were nominated from Duma parties, so people's representatives must campaign for their candidates in the regions in the remaining two weeks until voting day. True, United Russia members, who are the majority in the State Duma, did not receive an order to campaign for Dmitry Medvedev. They promise to simply once again explain to voters the country’s development plan until 2020 and the role of United Russia themselves in this development. There is a suspicion that parliamentarians are simply waiting for Medvedev to be elected and his “plan” to be translated into bills that could be adopted. And now the deputies don’t even understand what to do. The party in power does not yet have its own bills, and it is not accustomed to adopting others. That’s why the agendas of Duma plenaries are so short, and the meetings end before lunch.

While the newly elected Duma simply does not know what to do, the election campaign for local government elections is ending in the regions. But few people pay attention to it. Now, future Duma winners cannot be determined by elections to legislative assemblies, rather the opposite. The December elections taught regional authorities not to stand on ceremony with competitors. If earlier there were campaigns against specific parties - “Motherland” or the Party of Pensioners, now, in the name of the result of one party, all the others may suffer. By the way, the result of United Russia in the regional elections on March 2 will be more “clean” - local authorities will be deprived of both the federal administrative resource and the slogan of Putin’s plan. And Dmitry Medvedev looks like a completely non-partisan candidate, and his campaigning is completely parallel to the local elections.

In Tatarstan they are keenly interested in American-style democracy . And they even seem to be jealous. Last week they noticed that the slogan of US presidential candidate Barack Obama is very similar to the national slogan of President Mintimer Shaimiev “Without buldyrabyz!” - “We can!” Mr. Shaimiev often addresses his fellow countrymen with this assurance and even, it seems, considers himself the author of such a successful slogan. It seems like something to be proud of. But Barack Obama says the same thing to his voters, but in English: Yes, we can.

Daria Guseva, Russian Newsweek, - specially for Vremya Novostei