Russian election clues?   A couple of weeks ago, I ventured a bet that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will run and win re-election in next year's elections; his mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, will opt to keep his protégé in place, I wrote. While for a variety of reasons I still think that is the case, it's understandable why many think otherwise: Putin is throwing up a lot of conflicting signals. Take his decision to eradicate much-hated and bribe-laden car inspections for the remainder of the year, worth up to $300, writes Will Englund at the Washington Post. And what about Putin's announcement of a $285 billion program to rebuild Russia's ramshackle roads, another bane of the country (that's Moscow traffic pictured above)? Is Putin announcing such programs from a simple sense of good governance? According to Robert Coalson of RFE-RL, the way Russia's strongman is presiding over the affairs of the ruling United Russia party, he is sending "the strongest signals yet that he intends to return to the presidency in 2012."

This is entertaining -- and convincing -- to be sure. But that's the point. Putin doesn't need to convince anyone -- all of Russia and the rest of the world know that the job of president is his for the taking. So why the show? Because he wants the accolades, the hero-worship, the pleading crowds and so on, but while pushing matters to the brink, in the end he will, for the good of the nation of course, step aside (technically, that is) and maintain the status quo. The system works the way it is. Ask yourself this question: why in the last month (as the Moscow Times rounds up in an editorial) have the killers of Stanislav Markelov been imprisoned; has imprisoned oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, while not released, been permitted a fair hearing on state-run NTV television while announcing a decision to appeal; and has the alleged triggerman of murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya been captured and charged? Is it because Medvedev is acting against Putin's wishes?

This is where it's possible to lose one's way. What seems dissonant in the tandem in fact isn't. It happens because Putin wants the balance that Medvedev provides. Not incidentally, Medvedev is content with this state of affairs as well. One way to understand Medvedev is as simply another expression of Putin -- that is, even if Putin stepped completely out of the picture, Medvedev would not turn Russia into bastion of liberalness. Rather, when Medvedev's Russia undoes some of the injustices in the country, "what might appear to be the dismantling of Putin's legacy is not a dismantling at all," the Moscow Times editorial board writes. It said:

Khodorkovsky, even if given parole for good behavior, will not be acquitted. Investigators might have found Politkovskaya's killer, but we are unlikely to ever know who ordered the murder. Ultra-nationalism is still not being fought outside the courtroom. And thousands of other murky cases -- such as the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky or the beating of Kommersant reporter Oleg Kashin -- have not been properly investigated. Most important, the power vertical, along with its creator, is as strong as ever. Medvedev may stay in the Kremlin without tackling these issues. But if a handful of high-profile cases is all that he has to offer in terms of political reforms, his second term in office will differ little from Putin's policy of status quo. A second Medvedev term might then be best described as 'modernized stagnation.'

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