Regional power vital for new president
Russia’s regions play a critical role for new President Dmitrii Medvedev. Whoever controls the regions effectively controls the country, researcher Nikolay Petrov writes.
Mr. Medvedev does not have an analogous power structure to draw from like Vladimir Putin. When entering his presidential duties in year 2000, Mr. Putin could lean on his own people from the FSB apparatus. Observers have already noted that Medvedev did not take part in the latest round of gubernatorial appointments, though it was in March, after his election. Medvedev also made no significant statements during his campaign regarding Moscow’s relationship with the regions — a question crucial importance to a future Kremlin leader, Nikolay Petrov, scholar in the Moscow Carnegie Centre writes. There is already a new law allowing the president to grant governors federal employee status. This would subordinate a region’s federal ministries and departments to the governor. The law makes the governor simultaneously answerable to both the president and the prime minister — a new configuration of the vertical of power, the researcher adds in an article in the Moscow Times.
