The Media Mirror – Weekend's Russian press review

The Russian press still looks at the change of the government in Russia and the reaction of the Western analysts. It also discusses if the President is in search of a successor.

ITOGI offers its picture of the week: “The Russian government, unexpectedly unemployed.”

The headline in the PROFILE magazine reads: “You will never guess right!” Smaller print: “You thought it would be Ivanov or Medvedev? Would have been much too easy, would not it?”

Political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky writes in MOSKOVSKIE NOVOSTY: Vladimir Putin is not seeking to transfer his power to a successor. On the contrary, he is accumulating more and more and concentrating it in the Kremlin. Such amounts of power are not meant to be transferred to just one person.

What the President has in mind, writes Pavlovsky, is a complete reform of the political system in Russia, together with the legislative and executive power at all levels. That is why he is not in search of a successor as many think. He is in search of a replacement – someone to become a new President. But the role of Vladimir Putin will be played by Vladimir Putin, in the future as much as today, no matter in what official capacity.

Fedor Lukyanov writes in OGONYOK: The first reaction of many Western analysts to the change of government in Russia was – Moscow is departing further away from democratic values. That view can only lead to an ideological antagonism of “democratic” nations versus “non-democratic”. Even now there is a tendency to name Russia and China “the authoritarian giants” of the modern world.

Lukyanov writes, the Chinese model based on Communism and Confucianism is totally alien but understandable to the West. The current Russian model is based on the same values as the Western, but the West totally fails to understand it. The article says, it is time to stop treating Russia as the prodigal son of the West. It is time to allow Russia the right to be its own, even if unfathomable, self.

KOMSOMOLSKAYA PRAVDA quotes Tatiana Mizgireva, an expert from the Fangshui Positive agency, as saying: When in the XIX Century they put the river Neglinnaya into subterranean pipes, the Kremlin lost its harmony and the protection of flowing water on one side. That is the reason, says the expert, for many bad things that happened to Russia since then. She also says that President Putin surely knows that: he spends a lot of his time outside the Kremlin.