The Media Mirror: what's in today's Russian newspapers?

Ukraine: Yulia Timoshenko was elected Prime Minister by an old-fashioned hand vote. The Putin-Medvedev tandem: cross-subordination. These topics dominate the Russian papers on Wednesday.

Hands Up! That’s the headline ROSSIYSKAYA GAZETA attached to its report from the Ukrainian Parliament. The paper says that, after a painful week of struggle for every vote, Yulia Timoshenko has finally become Ukrainian Prime Minister once again. Russian analysts noticed that while President Yushchenko was absent from the vote, the U.S. Ambassador was present and seemed very glad for the Orange Princess.

KOMMERSANT says that judging by her pre-vote remarks, Yulia Timoshenko was preparing herself for war. But after the vote it turned out that there was no one to wage it on: she could now celebrate her victory. Now, continues the paper, quoting a Ukrainian expert, “She is aiming for the presidency, there’s no other way for her. There’ll be no pacifism: if necessary she will clash with Yushchenko.”

VREMYA NOVOSTEI writes Yulia Timoshenko from her first steps in the capacity of Prime Minister has made it clear that during her term she will “correct” relations with Russia, especially in the sphere of natural gas supply. In the same article there is a forecast by a Ukrainian political scientist, Andrey Ermolayev: “Ukrainian political life was a comfortable hot bath of compromise. Now it is going to boil because neither Yushchenko nor Timoshenko have any experience of dealing with systematic opposition.”

Indeed, says the paper, the former Prime Minister Victor Yanukovich in his leaving remarks hoped the new government of Yulia Timoshenko would clear away the mess left by the previous Orange experiment headed by Yulia Timoshenko. Yanukovich later told journalists that his party is going to be “a tough opposition.”

NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA writes that as  Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin would be much stronger than his predecessors. First of all because of his skill and experience gained in the past eight years and also because he would be working on the implementation of his own Putin Plan. President Medvedev in that case would co-operate with the Prime Minister in the form of “cross-subordination”. The paper continues that the main threat to the Putin Plan may come from a wrong decision made by the Putin Government. Maybe that is why Vladimir Putin has chosen the post of Prime Minister over other options.