Word: putin
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Growing tension between President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin complicates the picture. While Medvedev has been relatively forthcoming to the U.S. line on Iran, Putin (who is indirectly in charge of the state-controlled companies that trade there) has appeared skeptical. Putin said any decision on sanctions would be made not by Medvedev alone but by Russia's Security Council, which also includes himself, his Cabinet subordinates and parliamentary leaders loyal to the Prime Minister. Administration officials deny taking sides. Yet on the eve of his July summit in Moscow, Obama praised Medvedev and referred to Putin...
...Putin enjoys the largest support base in Russia, with his political party, United Russia, controlling 315 of the 450 seats in the Duma. Medvedev's manifesto implied that the party's super-majority would eventually need to be broken up and its control of the bureaucratic machinery dissolved. This prospect, though seemingly impossible, provided opposition leaders with a rallying cry heading into elections on Oct. 11 to choose representatives in 76 of the country's 83 regional governments...
...deputies also called for the resignation of the head of the Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, who, in their view, epitomizes all that is wrong with Russia's electoral system. A bearded apparatchik with Coke-bottle glasses, Churov served under Putin in the St. Petersburg mayor's office in the early 1990s. After Putin became President, he paved the way for Churov to lead the election commission, and Churov has since repaid the favor by deflecting the fraud allegations that mar every election in Russia...
...statement, aired on state television, killed off whatever flicker of hope liberals had that Medvedev might finally start moving Russia toward real democracy. The humbled opposition has since gone back to their places in the Duma. And the pro-democracy camp can only look with dread to 2012 when Putin is widely expected to run for President again. Whether he realizes it or not, Medvedev may already be a lame duck...
...TIME's photo-essay "Vladimir Putin: Action Figure...