Dmitry Medvedev is about to become Russian President and his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, will be the new Prime Minister. With little tradition of distributing power, Russia’s leadership will need to find a new way of governing – more public an

To discuss the power-sharing arrangements RT spoke to popular Russian journalist and anchor at Rossiya TV, Sergey Brilev, and political analyst Sergey Medvedev, from the Higher School of Economics.

Brilev believes that Putin over the eight years in power managed to convert himself from an ‘obscure apparatchik’ into ‘Vladimir Putin, the ruler’ – one of the most popular Russian leaders ever. He also brought the country to a traditional way of running with most of the people happy about it. He gave the country the prospect of ‘making it into something so much more transparent and likable’.

Sergey Medvedev added that the political system that Putin built is all about minimising risks and maximising stability. And the guidelines for the future joint work by Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev has been set up long before they were made public. Now the main challenge for them is to stick to the rules set by the law and not be tempted to bend them. With so many people with legal background being in power now – including Putin and Medvedev themselves – the chances for this are high, the analyst concluded.