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Medvedev 'Must Escape Putin's Shadow'

Russian President-elect Dmitry Medvedev and his mentor Vladimir Putin are bosom buddies. But for how long? Commentators in German say Russia's new leader will have to establish his own power base in the Kremlin.

German media commentators have seized on Sunday's presidential election to heap their usual criticism on Russia's system of government, which remains as opaque as ever following Dmitry Medvedev's pre-programmed victory. In fact, it has become even more unpredictable: Is Medvedev going to loosen the Kremlin's bureaucratic stranglehold on Russian business and thereby risk the wrath of powerful bureaucrats? How long will his alliance with Putin hold? Will he copy Putin's muscle-flexing foreign policy?

But despite all the murk, some commentators are hopeful. After all, Medvedev, unlike Putin doesn't have his origins in Russia's intelligence services, he hasn't been bashing the West in the election campaign and he has been making liberal noises.

Business daily Handelsblatt writes:

"In recent weeks Putin and Medvedev have held ambitious speeches pledging action on all fronts. If they mean what they say they will first have to tackle the results of their own policies: the rule of the bureaucracy over the economy, the resulting corruption and nepotism, the overregulation by the state. But if the new leadership continues to refrain from reforms and keeps on governing "by hand" as it pleases, this won't just have negative consequences for the economy. Latent personal tensions will grow. Who will take responsibility for mistakes, who will correct them?"

"The new president will in any case have to escape the shadow of his predecessor whom he continues to try so clumsily to imitate. Once he has his hands on the levers of power he is likely to develop a taste for using them. He will need time to appoint his own allies to important posts and to expand his own network. He is still confined in a fairly tight corset of budget restraints and long-term goals that Putin tied him into. Medvedev won't remain a colorless technocrat. He's reputed to be tough, under his amenable exterior. The world at first underestimated his predecessor and mentor too."

Center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"Dmitry Medvedev is unlikely to have as easy a time as Vladimir Putin. The people only agreed to Medvedev because they expect him to ensure continued economic growth. If the economy slows sharply, life could quickly get tougher for Putin's crown prince.

"The system with Medvedev as president and Putin as prime minister was designed under the assumption that Medvedev lacks the necessary power base in the Kremlin to become politically emancipated. But Putin himself showed it's possible to replace virtually all key staff in just a few years. No one knows how he will react if Medvedev copies him in this respect as well."

Expectations of a new liberal era under Medvedev are founded on little more than his conciliatory rhetoric, write Süddeutsche. "If the new president does indeed risk an opening, if he withdraws politicians from supervisory boards, fights corruption, tolerates criticism, he will make some dangerous enemies. Hawks in the Kremlin already regard his candidacy as a provocation. Putin's carefully balanced power network of rival groups has started to tremble. After a lucrative eight years spent merging the economy with politics, a lot is at stake for Russia's ruling class."

Business daily Financial Times Deutschland writes:

"Dmitry Medvedev has a few characteristics that give rise for hope. Unlike other Kremlin insiders, he doesn't stem from the secret service, which was an organ of repression in the Soviet Union. He isn't locked into the mindset of a command economy. And he has so far refrained from aggressive rhetoric towards Europe and the US."

Center-left Frankfurter Rundschau writes:

"Russia's new President Dmitry Medvedev has a problem. While Vladimir Putin moved into the Kremlin eight years ago as a tough war prime minister in the second Chechen war, Medvedev has the image of a softie. A softie who in the eyes of Russians hangs on Putin's strings and isn't an independent political personality. If he wants to change this image he will have to emancipate himself from Putin sooner or later."

David Crossland, 2.30 p.m. CET