Strongman, The

was neither Medvedev nor Ivanov. Instead Putin nominated an old colleague from St Petersburg, Viktor Zubkov. He was as grey and uninspiring as Fradkov, but for most of the Putin presidency he had headed a powerful anti-money-laundering unit, the Financial Monitoring Committee, which made him privy to the financial secrets of the elite. Few people had heard of him, yet within days the 66-year-old declared that he might indeed run for president.
    It wasn’t just outside observers that were shocked. I happened to be with the Valdai group in Moscow that day, and we had an appointment with Ivanov just two hours after he received the news that he was not, after all, heir presumptive. He laughed it off as best he could, but it was clear from his demeanour that the news was as big a shock to him as to everyone else. His soaring career had suddenly belly-flopped. He said Putin had not even discussed the move with him.
    So was Zubkov the next president? Only if Yeltsin’s manoeuvring was seen as a precedent. But Putin was inventing new ways of doing things, and unlike Yeltsin he had no intention of anointing a successor and then obligingly stepping out of politics. Two days later Putin opined that there were ‘at least five’ viable candidates. Kremlinologists assumed he meant Zubkov, Ivanov, Medvedev, and … two others. I understood from a Kremlin source that this was not merely flak thrown up to disorientate the pundits: Putin himself had not yet decided.
    It was only after the elections to the State Duma on 2 December that Putin finally revealed his choice – not that the result, which unsurprisingly gave his party, United Russia, 64 per cent of the votes, affected his decision. It was neither Zubkov nor the former KGB man Sergei Ivanov, on whom the dice fell, but the man who it seemed had been pipped at the post, Dmitry Medvedev.
    Again, it was a staged event, a pretence at democracy. The leaders of four parties, just elected to the Duma, came to Putin and put forward Medvedev’s name. Putin feigned surprise, and turned to Medvedev, who happened to be present: ‘Dmitry Anatolievich, have they discussed this with you?’
    ‘Yes, we had some preliminary discussions,’ replied the candidate.
    ‘Well,’ Putin had to agree, ‘if four parties representing different strata of Russian society have made this proposal … I have known Dmitry Anatolievich Medvedev for more than 17 years, and we have worked closely together all these years, and I fully and completely support this choice.’
    The following day, Medvedev declared that if he were elected he would nominate Putin for the post of prime minister. After months of confusion and manoeuvring, the way forward was suddenly clear. Putin would ensure his political longevity by transforming the post of prime minister (without so much as touching the constitution) from the quiet back-office occupied by Fradkov and Zubkov into the country’s real power-base.
    Though born in the same city as Putin, and a graduate from the same law faculty, Medvedev was 13 years younger and had a very different background. Born in 1965, into an intellectual family, he graduated in 1987, at the height of Gorbachev’s efforts to democratise the communist system. The zeitgeist of the time was all about debunking the KGB that Putin had chosen for his career. Medvedev helped run the campaign of the liberal reformer Anatoly Sobchak (one of his law professors) in the first genuine elections of the late 1980s. Sobchak later became mayor of St Petersburg and hired both Medvedev and Putin to work in his external relations office – this was when the two men met. Medvedev later followed Putin to Moscow, becoming his deputy chief of staff in 1999 and running his election campaign in 2000. As president, Putin appointed Medvedev as chairman of Gazprom, and later as his chief of staff.
    There were several reasons why Putin may have decided Medvedev was preferable to his main rival, Ivanov: he was less charismatic, had no power-base of his own, was less of a threat than a fellow silovik (who might be tempted to ease Putin out of the way) and – not unimportant for a small man – was even shorter than Putin. All in all, he was much less imposing and threatening than Ivanov, the tall cavalier who had once swept Condoleezza Rice off her feet. And there was the added benefit that with his liberal reputation, Medvedev would go down well in the West, perhaps acting as a lightning rod and removing the strain