Tandem

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev meets with opposition journalists and makes surprisingly enlightened utterances while Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is out of the country.

Perhaps the turmoil within the ruling elite during the 2007-08 transition, which seemed quite smoothly managed from the outside, was more discomfiting to the Kremlin than we previously thought.

Instead of increasing the investment of average people in the stability of the system by, say, making elections fairer and more frequent, the Kremlin is moving in the opposite direction.