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Emerging from his tutor’s shadow

When he took office on May 7, President Dmitry Medvedev had a well-defined list of priorities for his first 100 days in the Kremlin. It included taking first steps to modernise the Russian economy and society and promote a new partnership with the West. None of these was an easy task but Mr. Medvedev’s greatest challenge came from elsewhere. The war in South Ossetia dramatically recast his agenda and put to a severe test his ability to rule the world’s larges t country.

Georgia’s surprise attack on its breakaway territory confronted the 42-year-old former professor of law with some hard choices. On the one hand, Russia was duty-bound to defend several hundreds of its peacekeepers deployed in South Ossetia and the 70,000-strong civilian population, 90 per cent of which had Russian passports. On the other, Georgia is America’s closest “strategic ally” in the former Soviet Union and prime candidate for NATO membership. Russia ran a grave risk of confrontation with the world’s most powerful war machine.

Intervention in the conflict would derail Mr. Medvedev’s plans of achieving a dramatic improvement in Russia’s relations with the West. Just two months ago, he proposed radically redesigning Europe’s security system with Russia fully integrated into a new Euro-Atlantic security set-up. Moving Russian troops against Georgia would bury this strategic initiative.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was on his way to Beijing to attend the Olympic Games, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was rafting in faraway Altai and Mr. Medvedev himself was cruising down the Volga with his wife and son. August is traditionally a peak holiday season for the Russian government and the defence establishment.

Mr. Medvedev was under enormous pressure to take a decision fast, as the overwhelming Georgian forces were about to seal off the Roki tunnel, cutting the only road along which the Russian forces could enter South Ossetia. However, intervening too early, before Georgia fully revealed its intentions and before Russia went to the United Nations Security Council, was also risky as this would expose Moscow to accusations of aggression. (This is what eventually happened anyway. Even though the Russian army moved in a day after the start of a massive Georgian offensive, Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili claimed, without batting an eyelid, that his forces attacked South Ossetia only after 150 Russian tanks had rolled in.)

Moscow’s reaction to the crisis was swift, resolute and precise. While Mr. Putin engaged in crisis diplomacy in Beijing, winning a pledge from U.S. President George W. Bush that “nobody wants a war,” Moscow called an emergency meeting of the Security Council. The refusal by the U.S. and Britain to censure Georgia and demand an end to its offensive gave Russia a free hand to step in. After 24 hours of the Georgian assault, Russian forces poured into South Ossetia and Russian warplanes bombed Georgian positions and supply lines. In another 24 hours, it was all over. Georgia’s U.S.-trained and armed elite commandos were routed and they fled the battlefield. The Russian air force and artillery continued to thrash military facilities deep inside Georgia for another two days, as Moscow took time to discuss with Washington, Paris and Berlin the terms of a peace deal. Five days after Georgia unleashed the war, Mr. Medvedev called a halt to combat operations, exquisitely timing his ceasefire order for the arrival of French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Moscow to negotiate peace on behalf of the European Union.

Winning the war on the ground, Moscow, however, lost it on the propaganda front, failing to offset a heavy anti-Russian bias in the western media. But at the military and political level, it acted flawlessly. The crisis showed that Mr. Medvedev is neither a pale shadow of his predecessor nor his pushover, as the western media portrayed him. Western hopes that the new President might be less assertive and opt for a softer foreign policy have likewise been upset. In South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Mr. Medvedev practised what Mr. Putin preached in his famous 2006 Munich speech when he declared an end to Russia’s geopolitical retreat.

The crisis has helped to boost Mr. Medvedev’s popularity. Two-thirds of Russians polled last week approved of the way he handled it. The five-day victorious war did more to consolidate Mr. Medvedev’s grip on power than the preceding 100 days in office. He can now use his new strength to push forward his domestic reforms.

Even as he subscribed to Mr. Putin’s strategic goals of building a diversified science-based economy, raising living standards and asserting Russia’s national interests globally, Mr. Medvedev has brought to the Kremlin his own set of ideas, which he diplomatically described as “new accents.” “There will certainly be shifts in accent, both in domestic and foreign policy, because every President has his own style of leadership,” he said in an interview.

The “shifts” became apparent in Mr. Medvedev’s first 100 days. While Mr. Putin strengthened the government bureaucracy as his main instrument in rebuilding the state machinery, ruined and corrupted under the former President, Boris Yeltsin, Mr. Medvedev has moved to curtail the power of bureaucracy. He eased the burden of excessive government control over small and medium business, banning frequent checks of private companies and promising to severely punish officials who “terrorise” small businesses and sabotage the Centre’s efforts to promote the sector’s growth.

Mr. Medvedev has launched a war on rampant corruption that is stifling economic growth. A 20-page “National Anti-Corruption Plan” he signed calls for a new legislation by September, envisaging very severe punishment for corruption offences, control over incomes and expenses of government officials and their families, and use of information technologies to ensure transparency of administrative procedures. The President has assumed personal responsibility for combating graft by heading a Kremlin anti-corruption committee, something his predecessors never did. Analysts say the anti-corruption drive should help Mr. Medvedev further consolidate his hold on power, replacing corrupt officials by his loyalists.

Mr. Medvedev has also ordered draft changes in legislation to make the judiciary a truly independent branch of authority and end widespread practices of government officials bringing pressure on judges to bend court rulings. Plans are being drawn up to initiate far-reaching changes in the political system to make it more open and competitive. A think tank Mr. Medvedev helped to create and whose board he heads has prepared a report that calls for introducing greater political freedoms. The report, “Democracy: Russian Model Development,” commissioned by the Modern Development Institute, argues that the country needs to adopt a more pluralistic political model through an “evolutionary and gradual” process under the Kremlin control.

Such reforms would be in line with Mr. Medvedev’s election campaign statements that “freedom is better than non-freedom” and “no undemocratic state has ever become truly prosperous.” But they would seem to go against the policies of Mr. Putin who, during his presidency, set up a system of “controlled democracy” in which both pro-government and opposition parties were controlled from the Kremlin. Yet Mr. Putin has fully endorsed Mr. Medvedev’s programme of reforms. Both leaders share the view that Russia is ready for the next phase in its political evolution. Tight government control over the democratic process needed to bring about political stability has become a barrier to further modernisation of Russian society.

Mr. Medvedev’s first 100 days showed that his tandem with Mr. Putin, his friend and ally for the past 17 years, proved its strength and efficiency. Mr. Putin may have played a dominant role in the duo so far, but during the conflict with Georgia he deliberately sought to stay in the shadows, allowing Mr. Medvedev to steal the show and prove his mettle, which he did. Mr. Medvedev is gradually emerging from his tutor’s shadow. The two leaders have shown no sign of disagreement or friction. They have worked as a well-oiled team, each having his sphere of responsibility. Mr. Medvedev looks after the reform of political institutions, the state apparatus and the judiciary, while Mr. Putin concentrates on the economy. Foreign policy is the sphere they share. Neither tries to step on the other’s turf, and the power-sharing arrangement has generated new checks and balances.

The war in the Caucasus has further cemented the Medvedev-Putin tandem and rallied support for their leadership among the elite and society. While Mr. Putin is seen as the leader who rebuilt the Russian state and reasserted its global clout, Mr. Medvedev is praised for standing up for Russia’s interests in the worst foreign policy crisis since the end of the Soviet Union. The crisis has given Russians a new sense of self-respect and new confidence in their leadership, and in the further resurgence of their country.

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