Dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin is a game of give-and-take. If you give him something valuable, you may get something in return. This time it was the other way around: Putin on Monday placed Medvedev, the head of Gazprom's advisory board and the deputy prime minister, as his sole preferred candidate to succeed him as Russian president. On Tuesday, 42-year-old Medvedev, a close ally of Putin over the past two decades, announced that his presidential bid is a way to ensure "continuity" in the country's economic and political course, and added that Putin therefore should become prime minister.

"I consider it very important for our country to keep in the most important position in executive power -- in the post of chairman of the Russian government -- Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin," Medvedev said Tuesday in a live address on Russian television, his first public statement since Putin lifted him into the presidential hopeful's chair. And it's more than hopeful given Putin's overwhelming popularity in Russia and the people's pledge to vote anyone he deems fit for the job. "I have known him very closely for more than 17 years," Putin said about Medvedev on state television Monday. "We have worked very closely together all these years, and I completely and utterly support this choice."

But who is Medvedev? First of all, he is one of Putin's closest aides.

"Like Putin, he is part of the so-called 'St. Petersburg crew' and has stepped up the career ladder alongside Putin, who has nominated him for several key positions," Wolfgang Eichwede, head of the Research Center for East European Studies at the University of Bremen, told United Press International Tuesday in a telephone interview.

Putin met Medvedev, a lawyer by profession, in the early 1990s in their respective hometown of St. Petersburg, where the young man worked as a legal adviser under Putin in the mayor's office.

At the end of 1999, Putin chose Medvedev to head his presidential election campaign (which proved to be successful) and later made him the deputy head and eventually head of his presidential apparatus.

"That's where all important political decisions are taken," Hans-Henning Schroeder, a Russia expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin-based think tank, told United Press International in a nod to Medvedev's political experience. "But he is very young and hasn't been very successful when he was in charge of upgrading the housing, education and healthcare systems in Russia. So he will need Putin's backing for at least one or two more years."

So what is the strategy behind the nomination? Putin chose Medvedev ahead of two more experienced figures also named as potential successors -- First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, 54, and Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, 66. Both Eichwede and Schroeder see Medvedev as a politician who is less hawkish than the two other candidates, and more open toward political and economic contacts with the West.

"But if he wants to push through the modernization of Russia and open the country to the West, he would have to do it against his own apparatus," Schroeder said.

Vladimir Ryzhkov, a prominent liberal politician, said Putin may want to be able to easily regain power if Medvedev would step down early as president.

"Medvedev is a compromise choice because he will allow Putin to keep a free hand," he told a Russian radio station. "If Putin wants to gradually leave power, Medvedev guarantees him comfort and security and will continue to listen to him. If Putin wants to return in two, three years ... then Medvedev will be the person who will without a doubt give up the path for him."

Eichwede, however, added that one should not underestimate Medvedev.

"He is young and smart. We must not see him only as Putin's puppet," he told UPI.

And then there remains of course the most important question behind the power game currently played in Moscow: What will happen to Putin?

There are several options, but Putin taking over the prime minister post seems to be the most likely at the end of Tuesday. But what then?

Currently, the prime minister is a rather representational post with limited to no powers. All of those have been shifted to the presidential post over the past eight years, including power over the military.

"I can't imagine Putin accepting the prime minister post as it is, without real powers," Schroeder said. "If he accepts, then the prime minister post will likely be upvalued."

But until then, speculation will be ripe in and around Moscow, observers say.

"No analyst should act as if he knew what will happen next," Eichwede said. "No can possibly know that."

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