MOSCOW - Vladimir Putin declared on Saturday he was ready to return to the Russian presidency after current head of state Dmitry Medvedev announced he would bow to his mentor at March's election.
Ending months of speculation over which of them will be president, Medvedev proposed Putin, now prime minister, at a congress of the ruling United Russia party. Putin, widely regarded as the driving force in the country for the last 11 years, invited Medvedev to take his place as prime minister.
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Opinion polls show Putin is sure to be elected for a six-year term in the March presidential election, ushering in what critics say could be an era of stagnation in the world's biggest country.
His party also hopes to hold on to its two-thirds majority in the State
Duma lower house in a parliamentary election on Dec. 4 with Medvedev as
the top candidate on its list.
Putin, 58, is widely seen as more conservative than Medvedev and some
economists have said his return to the Kremlin could herald an era of
economic stagnation in the world's biggest energy producer.
Others have said that although Medvedev, 46, is widely portrayed as more
liberal, there is more difference in their style than in their
policies.
Putin was president from 2000 to 2008 but steered Medvedev into the
Kremlin in 2008 because he was barred from a third successive term by
the constitution.
Medvedev agreed at the United Russia congress that he would head its
list of candidates in the parliamentary election and Putin then invited
him to take over the government.
The next government is expected to face many economic challenges and
calls for tough economic and political reforms, which critics say could
provoke unrest.
It also faces difficult relations with the United States, despite calls
for a "reset' in relations, and foreign policy uncertainties following
the upheaval in the Arab world.
"Medvedev is leaving the presidency but stays on the scene as a
reformist prime minister to implement unpopular and painful modernizing
reforms," said Vladimir Frolov, president of LEFF Group, a government
relations and PR firm.
Andrei Piontkovsky, a political analyst at the Russian Academy of
Science, said: "The danger is that it (the decision) deprives the
establishment of any illusions for liberalization and modernization.
"For today the country must face a very gloomy outlook -- this is
stagnation and decay for another 12 years, this is the Brezhnev era
revisited," he said, referring to the 1970s and 1980s under Communist
chief Leonid Brezhnev when a boom in natural resource extraction masked a
steep industrial decline in the Soviet economy.