Dmitry Medvedev, who marked his first year as Russian president last week, is often said to be in office but not in power. Many observers believe that the former president and current prime minister Vladimir Putin is the country's real ruler. But Mr Medvedev's growing stature is raising the prospect that he will stand for re-election in 2012, despite widespread assumptions that Mr Putin, constitutionally barred from seeking a third presidential term in 2008, wants the top job back.
@body arnhem:Until now the likely scenario was that as Mr Putin's protege and handpicked successor, Mr Medvedev was no more than a caretaker president who would make way for his master either in 2012 or in anticipated elections. But the conflict with Georgia last summer and the economic crisis have changed all that.
Russia's disproportionate response to Georgia's provocation in South Ossetia was very much Mr Putin's war. He coordinated the Russian retaliation against the Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili's attempt to reclaim the breakaway province by military force. Moreover, Mr Putin's rhetoric on the arrogance of US unipolarity and the EU's double standards helped to send East-West relations into a tailspin not seen since before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1986.
Of course, Mr Medvedev supported the war and pushed for the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia's independence. But in contrast with Mr Putin's belligerence, he sought a diplomatic solution and accepted EU mediation. Mr Medvedev has also proposed a new pan-European security treaty that attempts to provide a settlement for this and the other post-Soviet "frozen conflicts" in the region.
Meanwhile the economic crisis has eroded Mr Putin's patrimonial system - the convergence of power and property based on a state monopoly of primary resources. He presided over a group of oligarchs who were rewarded for their loyalty with a share in the national wealth, notably control over the largest state-controlled corporations such as Gazprom and Rosneft, as well as posts in the government. By renationalising strategic sectors and combining business power with political office, Mr Putin stripped those deemed to be disloyal - such as the former owner of the energy giant Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky - of their assets and their political influence, while re-establishing and reinforcing the vertical power structure of the central state with the Kremlin at its head.
This marked a fundamental break with the policies of his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin: in effect, Mr Putin replaced the corrupt oligarchic capitalism of the Yeltsin period with a corrupt bureaucratic capitalism - "a patrimonial fusion of executive power and material wealth", in the words of the economist and Russia expert Professor Robert Skidelsky. The global financial meltdown and the collapse of energy and commodity prices in the second half of 2008 have not just revealed Russia's economic weakness, but also undermined Mr Putin's political power base.
When Mr Medvedev was sworn in last May he proceeded quickly to replace key figures who owed their positions to Putin with his own appointees, including the head of the FSB (the KGB's successor) and others in the government and state-run corporations. The young president's better grasp of economics and his regular criticism of the government's handling of the crisis suggest that Mr Medvedev is stamping his authority on the presidential office and that he is not afraid to differ from his prime minister.
So far Mr Medvedev and Mr Putin have operated as a team in which the former is the good cop and the latter the bad cop. According to Kremlinologists such as Gleb Pavlovsky, no decision has been taken as to who will be the 2012 presidential candidate of the governing party United Russia, now headed by Mr Putin. Nor is it likely that Mr Medvedev will use his constitutional power to sack the prime minister. Mr Putin commands a two-thirds majority in the Duma, enabling him to start impeachment procedures against the president.
Since the system devised by Mr Putin is based on his personal patronage, Mr Medvedev will not launch a pre-emptive strike against his mentor. However, as Mr Medvedev's authority on foreign policy and the economy has increased, so has his power to determine his own political future. If he helps to stabilise the Russian economy and reduces dependency on energy through diversification, he will be the front-runner in the presidential elections in 2012. Better relations with the US and the EU will help his image at home because most Russians dislike Russian isolationism.
The challenge for Mr Medvedev is to craft a vision that delivers modernisation in line with Russia's traditions of high culture, scientific achievement and social solidarity. What the country requires is a specific model of socio-economic development that delivers stronger growth and rising living standards through investment in a diversity of productive activities ranging from high-tech industry via manufacturing to modern infrastructure and efficient agriculture.
None of this will lead automatically to greater political liberalisation, the rule of law or closer cooperation with the West. But for both Russia and rest of the world, a two-term President Medvedev seems preferable to a third-term President Putin.
Adrian Pabst teaches religion and politics at the University of Nottingham and is a research fellow at the Luxembourg Institute for European and International Studies
Adrian Pabst