Presidency of Dmitry Medvedev

• 1. Introduction

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  Dmitry Medvedev was inaugurated as the third President of the Russian Federation on the 7th of May 2008, in a ceremony at the Kremlin Palace. After receiving a gold chain bearing the double-headed eagle symbol of the presidency, he spoke plainly about what he saw as Russia's deepest wound: "Corruption in our country has become rampant. It has become commonplace and characterises the life of the Russian society." Those words set the tone for a presidency full of ambition and contradiction.

  At the moment he took the oath, Medvedev was the youngest person to lead Russia since 1918. He had served as head of the Presidential Administration under Vladimir Putin and as chairman of Gazprom. His election raised a question that Russians and outside observers would spend four years debating: who actually governed Russia? The man who had just taken the oath, or the man he had just appointed as his Prime Minister?

  Behind the formality of the inauguration ceremony lay a set of interlocking puzzles. Could Medvedev modernize a state built on oil revenues and patronage? Could a reformer operate inside a system he had not built? And what was the precise nature of the arrangement between Medvedev and Putin? The answers, when they came, would be delivered not just in decrees and laws, but in a single announcement at a party congress in September 2011.

• 2. The Tandem Problem

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  Vladimir Putin accepted Medvedev's nomination as Prime Minister on the 8th of May 2008, the day after the inauguration. The State Duma confirmed him by 392 votes to 56, with only Communist deputies voting against. It was a swift, orderly transition on paper. In practice, it created something Russia had not experienced before: a constitutionally powerful president paired with a prime minister who was still the country's most popular politician.

  The phrase "tandem rule" spread quickly through the media as analysts struggled to describe what was happening. A poll conducted by the Levada Center in September 2009 offered a snapshot of public opinion. Of 1,600 Russians surveyed, only 13% believed Medvedev held the most power, 32% believed Putin did, and 48% believed power was shared between the two men.

  Small linguistic details attracted scrutiny. The Daily Telegraph reported that observers noted Medvedev used the formal Russian pronoun "vy" when addressing Putin, while Putin responded with the informal "ty." These are not trivial distinctions in Russian social life. The choice of pronoun signals hierarchy.

  Medvedev pushed back publicly. "I am the leader of this state, I am the head of this state," he said. The Kremlin maintained formally that power rested with the president. But the BBC noted in late 2010 that some analysts interpreted Medvedev's overtures to NATO and his comments about the need for stronger political opposition as efforts to differentiate himself from Putin ahead of the 2012 presidential election.

• 3. Modernisation and Its Limits

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  The Medvedev modernisation programme was built around five technological priorities: efficient energy use, nuclear technology, information technology, medical technology and pharmaceuticals, and space technology combined with telecommunications. Its stated goal was to reduce Russia's deep dependence on oil and gas revenues and build a diversified, high-technology economy.

  The most visible symbol of this agenda was the Skolkovo innovation center, a project widely described as Medvedev's brainchild. On the 7th of August 2009, Medvedev instructed the Prosecutor General and the Chief of the Audit Directorate to examine the new category of "state corporations" that Putin had promoted during his own presidency. Medvedev said these corporations would inevitably be privatised and that the state's expanded role in the economy was a temporary condition.

  In November 2010, Medvedev used his annual address to the Federal Assembly to press for wider privatisation at both the federal and regional level. He pointed to a planned three-year asset sale program valued at $32 billion as the model his government intended to follow. Regions, he argued, should sell non-core assets to fund post-crisis spending and should be rewarded for finding their own revenue streams.

  The Presidential Commission on Innovation, which Medvedev established in May 2009, drew members from across the government and from academia and business. Medvedev personally chaired its monthly meetings. Whether these institutions produced lasting change was a separate question. The modernisation agenda competed with the structural weight of an economy built on commodity exports, and the financial crisis of 2008 arrived just as the presidency was beginning.

• 4. Fighting Corruption

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  On the 19th of May 2008, less than two weeks after taking office, Medvedev signed a decree on anti-corruption measures and created an Anti-Corruption Council. The speed of the move signaled genuine priority. The National Anti-Corruption Plan followed in July of that year, published in the official newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta. It proposed stiffer sanctions, mandatory reporting of corruption by officials, and disqualification measures for those who committed minor offences.

  The resulting legislation, known as Federal Law N 273-FZ on Corruption Counteraction, was signed on the 25th of December 2008. Professor Richard Sakwa described it as "serious, if flawed, legislation," calling it "quite an achievement" given the context, while noting that preliminary results were meagre. Transparency International recorded Russia's score in the Corruption Perceptions Index rising from 2.1 in 2008 to 2.2 in 2009.

  Medvedev continued layering on measures. A presidential decree on the 10th of March 2009 launched civil service reform covering 2009 to 2013. On the 13th of April 2010, presidential decree No. 460 introduced a National Anti-Corruption Strategy, with the plan to be updated every two years. Georgy Satarov, president of the Indem think tank, said the decree "probably reflected Medvedev's frustration with the fact that the 2008 plan had yielded little result."

  By January 2011, Medvedev himself admitted publicly that the government had failed in its anti-corruption measures so far. Four months later, on the 4th of May 2011, he signed legislation raising fines for bribery to up to 100 times the value of the bribe, with a maximum fine of 500 million rubles, equivalent to approximately $18.3 million.

• 5. Police, Elections, and Reform

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  The Russian police reform began not with legislation but with an unusual invitation. Medvedev initiated the process in late 2009 with a decree on the 24th of December directing the government to begin planning. In early August 2010, a draft law was posted online for public comment. Within 24 hours of the website opening, more than 2,000 comments had been submitted. Officials incorporated citizen feedback into subsequent revisions.

  The reform moved through parliament in January and February 2011. The lower house approved it on the 28th of January, the upper house on the 2nd of February, and Medvedev signed the bill into law on the 7th of February. The most visible outcome was a name change: Russia's police force, known since Soviet times as the Militsiya, became the Politsiya on the 1st of March 2011. Around 217 billion rubles, roughly $7 billion, were allocated from the federal budget for the reform between 2012 and 2013.

  On the electoral side, Medvedev proposed a constitutional amendment in his first parliamentary address on the 5th of November 2008 to extend presidential and Duma terms from four to six and five years respectively. In 2009 he also backed a reduction in the State Duma election threshold from 7% to 5%, and lowered the signature requirement for parties seeking Duma representation from 200,000 to 150,000 for the 2011 elections, with a further reduction to 120,000 planned for subsequent cycles.

  His record on political competition was uneven. In August 2009 he promised to break United Russia's near-monopoly on the political system. Two months later, regional elections produced a United Russia victory with 66% of the vote. Medvedev called this proof of the party's moral right to govern. On the 26th of October 2009, First Deputy Chief of Staff Vladislav Surkov warned that democratic experiments could "rip Russia apart." Medvedev did veto a bill on the 6th of November 2010 that would have restricted antigovernment demonstrations.

• 6. War and Doctrine

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  In the night of the 7th to the 8th of August 2008, Georgia launched a large-scale military attack against South Ossetia. Seven Russian peacekeepers stationed in the region were killed. Russia responded the same day by deploying military forces into South Ossetia and striking Georgian military infrastructure from the air. Abkhazia and Russia together opened a second front in the Kodori Gorge. Five days of fighting ended with Georgian forces expelled from both separatist regions.

  On the 26th of August, following a unanimous vote of the Federal Assembly, Medvedev signed a presidential decree formally recognising Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states. The G8 condemned the action. Tensions between Russia and the United States reached their highest point since the Cold War ended.

  Five days after the recognition decree, on the 31st of August 2008, Medvedev outlined what became known as the Medvedev Doctrine. It rested on five principles: supremacy of fundamental international law, a multipolar world order, no Russian pursuit of confrontation with other nations, Russian protection of its citizens wherever they live, and the development of ties in friendly regions.

  The doctrine had immediate operational implications. Medvedev's address to parliament on the 5th of November 2008 included a commitment to deploy the Iskander missile system and radar-jamming facilities in Kaliningrad Oblast to counter a proposed US missile defense system in Eastern Europe. That threat was withdrawn after President Barack Obama announced on the 17th of September 2009 that Washington would not place missile defense elements in the Czech Republic or Poland.

• 7. Reset and New START

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  Where Medvedev's predecessor had grown increasingly hostile toward the United States, Medvedev pursued a noticeably different posture. He cultivated a closer relationship with President Barack Obama, and the two administrations worked toward what became known as the "reset" in relations between the two countries.

  The clearest product of that effort was the New START treaty, the nuclear arms reduction agreement widely cited as Medvedev's central achievement in foreign policy. Parallel to this, Medvedev's decision in the autumn of 2009 to stand down the Iskander missile deployment threat after Obama's missile defense announcement demonstrated that the reset had practical consequences in both directions.

  In August 2009, Medvedev published an open letter criticising Ukraine's president Viktor Yushchenko for what he called "the anti-Russian position of the current Ukrainian authorities." Analysts at the time said the letter was timed to influence the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election. The letter drew a response and was later seen as having shaped the pro-Russian orientation of the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, who won that election.

• 8. September 2011

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  On the 24th of September 2011, at the United Russia party congress, Medvedev announced that Vladimir Putin would be the party's presidential candidate in the election scheduled for the following year. He also disclosed something that transformed how both men's presidencies would be understood in retrospect: the two had already agreed on this arrangement before Medvedev's term even began. Putin had been constitutionally ineligible to run in 2008 due to term limits, so Medvedev had held the office, and the deal had always envisioned Putin's return.

  Medvedev said he personally wished to remain in government in another capacity. Putin accepted on the same day and endorsed Medvedev for the position of Prime Minister, contingent on United Russia performing well in the upcoming legislative elections.

  Putin won the presidential election on the 4th of March 2012, and was inaugurated on the 7th of May, the exact day Medvedev's four-year term ended. Medvedev moved into the Prime Minister's office. The Duma term extension Medvedev had proposed and passed, which would have lengthened presidential terms to six years, did not apply to his own presidency. It would, however, apply to Putin's next term, meaning the constitutional change Medvedev signed extended the period of Putin's future governance.