We have now two presidents in Russia: old one is Mister Putin and a new one, appointed on March 2, Mister Medvedev. That idiocy will be formally ended on May 7, when Mr. Medvedev will be inaugurated in Kremlin’s seat. But nevertheless, for more than two months, Russia was headed by two presidents.
As to Putin’s in his first years of presidency to Mr. Medvedev also could be addressed banal questions: “Who is Mister Medvedev?” Because Mr. Medvedev is not a political figure, he is a practically unknown bureaucrat, one of a huge crowd of bureaucrats surrounding Putin. As Putin himself is a small bureaucrat, one from a huge crowd of “chinovniks” surrounding Yeltsin. If the elected president had been named Zyuganov or Yavlinski or Kasparov or even Limonov, nobody in Russia would have asked a question: “Who is that man?” Because these are political leaders, actors in Russian political play. They are known to general population. Mr. Medvedev, on the contrary, is not known, or wasn’t known, at all. Mr. Medvedev is not a leader of political party, he is not a member of political party, so he is not a political man. We can guess that he is a member of Putin’s circle of close friends, a member of some inner circle. If he is to be appointed to the post of guarding of their interests, we are guessing that Mr. Medvedev is trusted by Mr. Putin’s group and Mr. Putin himself.
Rosokhrankultura, the federal mass media and culture oversight agency, has sent Kommersant a warning not to use the word combination “National Bolshevik Party” or the abbreviation NBP, inasmuch as the National Bolshevik Party is not officially registered. The agency cited “the impermissibility of violations of the requirements of the legislation of the Russian Federation” in a letter signed by deputy chairman of the agency Alexander Romanenkov.