Short answers, pulled from the story.
Dmitry Medvedev won the 2008 Russian presidential election with 71 percent of the vote. He was backed by incumbent president Vladimir Putin and five political parties, including United Russia, Fair Russia, the Agrarian Party, Civilian Power, and Russian Ecological Party "The Greens."
Putin was constitutionally barred from running for a third consecutive presidential term. Instead, he announced on the 10th of December 2007 that Dmitry Medvedev was his preferred successor, and Medvedev subsequently pledged to appoint Putin as prime minister if elected.
The OSCE's election monitoring arm, ODIHR, refused to observe the vote because of what it called severe restrictions placed on its observers by the Russian government. The central dispute was over observer numbers and timing: ODIHR said it needed at least 50 observers deployed by the 15th of February, five days before Moscow's proposed date. Russia rejected the OSCE's characterization, calling its decision unacceptable and accusing the organization of political bias.
Monitoring groups gave conflicting assessments. The European election monitoring group PACE characterized the election as "neither free nor fair" and noted that not all candidates had equal media coverage. The Commonwealth of Independent States and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation said the election met international standards. The OSCE refused to monitor the election at all.
Four candidates appeared on the ballot: Dmitry Medvedev of United Russia, Gennady Zyuganov of the Communist Party, Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the Liberal Democratic Party, and Andrey Bogdanov of the Democratic Party. Boris Nemtsov of the Union of Right Forces initially registered but withdrew on the 26th of December 2007.
Following his election, Medvedev appointed Vladimir Putin as prime minister, as he had pledged before the vote. This arrangement allowed Putin to remain an influential figure in Russian politics despite being constitutionally barred from a third consecutive presidential term. The International Herald Tribune described the election as the culmination of Putin's eight-year effort to consolidate control over the government, business, and the news media.