Last week Dmitry Medvedev appeared to cancel "tandemocracy" when he said that he made all the key decisions. True, he put Vladimir Putin on the same footing as himself. Meanwhile the Prime Minister was busy promoting the Cabinet's anti-crisis plans. The rest of the country was going about its usual business. The authorities had Mikhail Khodorkovsky on trial for the second time while the KPRF was quietly dragging the Government to the Strasburg Court. In the meantime various sectors of the economy were asking for financial assistance. The Government, contrary to the old Russian custom, asked no questions and splashed out to some (indeed to many), but not to others.
The Medvedev-Putin tandem was hampered even by geography. While Dmitry Medvedev was heading for London to try and help rescue the world economy, Vladimir Putin was striving mightily to help the Russian economy. So, while the former kept talking about the responsibility of every big country to other countries, the latter was anxious to protect the domestic producer. In a BBC interview shortly before leaving for London, Mr Medvedev declared that he was the person running the state. After all, the President is the head of state. "The main decisions are made by the President on behalf of the state, that is obvious," Mr Medvedev stressed.
To the foreign journalist, however, the premise was anything but obvious. He suggested that in relations with the West Mr Medvedev and Mr Putin were playing the roles of the good cop and the bad cop, respectively. But the President, who seemed to have cancelled the tandem a moment ago, promptly restored and even strengthened Mr Putin's powers because in the context of the BBC's question his answer to the effect that they were both good cops meant that the Prime Minister had full powers in the field of foreign policy, which, incidentally, is the President's prerogative under the Constitution.
Mr Putin apparently had no time for all these niceties because he was busy implanting his Government's anti-crisis programme into public consciousness. True, he first had to drive it home to United Russia, his own party. The party's leadership came to a meeting with the Prime Minister with a bundle of "original" proposals, but emerged with an irrepressible desire to propagate Mr Putin's ideas. As it turned out, United Russia was not original because the following day other parties and citizens' representatives of every stripe were full of praise for his Plan 2.
Mr Putin meanwhile continued to hand out billions of budget money. Some got a bounty while others were lucky to get a few crumbs. The coal bosses found themselves in the latter category and were very angry. For some reason they sent an open letter to the President, whose right to sign financial documents is questioned by many. For example, AvtoVAZ has never asked him for anything.
In the BBC interview Mr Medvedev broke the official silence on the new Khodorkovsky trial. Without pressing the point too hard, the President did not rule out an acquittal. The court, indeed, is trying to be all things to all men. It is making concessions both to the prosecution and to the defense. No matter that the former oligarch's supporters claim that the concessions are unequal and that while substantive concession have been made to the prosecution the defense has been getting only promises. On the surface, the court is impartial.
Already the PACE observer at the YUKOS trial is cautiously speaking about progress in the Russian justice system while admitting that the prosecution and the court are still hand in glove with each other. It is interesting whether the European Court of Justice will be as glib when it comes to consider the KPRF's challenge of the results of the latest Duma elections. Last week the Communists sent all the factual materials on the December 2007 elections to Strasbourg by special courier, thus setting aside for the moment their anti-Western rhetoric to further their political ends.
Ivan Rodin