Soon after the protests in December, President Dmitry Medvedev introduced a series of bills to the State Duma designed to liberalize elections. Foremost among them was the proposal to reinstate the direct election of governors, which then-President Vladimir Putin cancelled in 2004 after the Beslan school attack that resulted in 334 hostage deaths.

Initial results on Sunday evening indicated that United Russia would come in with about 47 percent or 48 percent of the vote. By 1 a.m., it had topped 50 percent of the vote.

Russian business is just as scared of the state and government officials as it is dependent on them. Businesspeople in most countries are careful to avoid doing anything that would bring harm to the state, but in those countries with an effective legal system, they at least feel protected from abuses by government officials. These protections do not exist in Russia.

In a snapshot of what Vladimir Putin and the "power vertical" did ― and didn't do ― for a nation suffering from raging fires, an opposition politician lays out the failings of the top-down, one-man system.

Dmitry Medvedev’s fight against terrorism can be effective only if he can narrow the gap between the government and the people.

The United States seemed to take a hands-off approach to Russia’s election irregularities, as did most Russians.

Unfortunately, Russia’s leaders and bureaucrats think about the design defects of a building or plant only after an accident occurs and then pin responsibility either on a minor functionary or a top chief like Chubais, depending on the political climate.

The timing of Dmitry Medvedev's first state-of-the-nation address left something to be desired since he could not compete with Barack Obama's victory, which was the main news around the world.

Anybody who has ridden the Moscow metro has undoubtedly noticed the elderly women who sit hermetically sealed in their little glass booths at the bottom of the escalators. They look as if they have been sitting there ever since the metro first opened in the 1930s.

Last weekend marked the 15th anniversary of former President Boris Yeltsin's siege of the renegade White House.

After more than 15 years, I still remember a fascinating conversation I had in 1992. I was visiting a Columbia University Sovietology professor at his country home 100 kilometers from Manhattan. I was introduced to an intellectual, elderly man who had been one of Czechoslovakia's leaders prior to World War II.

Speaking at the City Day celebrations on Sunday, Mayor Yury Luzhkov turned back to Moscow's history, saying, ""During previous wars, Moscow was the central point from which Russia and the Soviet Union defeated its enemies. From the walls of Moscow, we defeated fascism.

With the Olympic Games over, we can now take a look at whether Russia achieved the status of athletic superpower.

With all of the tremendous political weight that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accumulated over the last eight years, he has the rare ability to wreak havoc on financial markets with only one short phrase.

Almost daily we hear of a new incident in Abkhazia or South Ossetia -- an explosion, murder or random shelling. Moscow accuses the Georgian military of provocation, and Tbilisi responds by blaming Moscow.

Stability has become the catchword of the Putin era. The country's political life is now so predictable that most people no longer take any interest whatsoever in politics. It's indeed all very dull and boring.

ere was no line as I stepped up to the express-mail window at Moscow's Central Post Office on Tverskaya Ulitsa. The attendant was a middle-aged woman wearing a standard-issue blue smock.

Two years ago, I met with a high-ranking Kremlin official who confidently asserted, ""The next president will surely become more of a moralist than former President Vladimir Putin, who is not suited to that style of behavior."" Now, Dmitry Medvedev has become president, but he has yet to mention the issue of morals or ethics in society.

I have heard some disparaging remarks about the recent government reshuffle. Some people had expected bigger changes. Although official announcements indicated that up to two-thirds of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's staff were new, those changes were accomplished by simply reshuffling the same old people around.

This spring marks an anniversary that Russia will not commemorate. In fact, Moscow will make a point of ignoring it, as if the event had never happened. I am speaking of Holodomor, in which millions died of starvation in Ukraine, the Northern Caucasus and the Volga region in the spring of 1933. The famine began earlier, but reached its peak during those months. This year is the 75th anniversary of Holodomor, and Kiev will honor its victims as it has done in prior years.

Some members of Moscow's political establishment considered the recent NATO summit in Bucharest a partial victory since Georgia and Ukraine were not invited to join the alliance. But far from saying ""no,"" NATO promised that these countries would eventually become members.

Whenever something bad happens to a Russian child who was adopted by parents from the United States, Russian television is bound to show it as the leading story. These media reports, however, rarely dig below the surface to find out what motivated foreigners to adopt these children in the first place and to explain why these adoptions ended so tragically.

The Russian blogosphere showed a lot of activity during the presidential election campaign. The only part of the pre-election televised debates to generate universal interest among bloggers was when Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky scuffled with a representative of rival candidate Andrei Bogdanov. If it were not for this heated exchange, most bloggers might never have known that there were debates at all.

When the Foreign Ministry recently denied an entry visa to Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, it sparked a flurry of discussion on blogs.

Addressing the annual security conference in Munich on Saturday, First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who was once a leading candidate to succeed President Vladimir Putin, said, ""We respect those values that the United States and Europe have cultivated for centuries.

As a presidential candidate, what values and ideas does First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stand for? According to the latest VTsIOM survey, with only five weeks remaining until the March 8 presidential election, 65 percent of the people still have no idea. And considering that Medvedev's victory was a foregone conclusion from the moment President Vladimir Putin chose him as his successor, I think the word vybory, which means ""elections"" and, in the singular, ""choice,"" has little relevance to what will take place on March 8. Instead, the word golosovaniye, which means ""voting,"" is a better word to describe the presidential election.

Many observers have concluded that First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who in all probability will become the next president in March, is a liberal. But it is a mystery to me why so many people sign on to this interpretation. It may be because Medvedev has a smooth, soft-spoken and intelligent way of speaking. In addition, he is not known for making hard-line speeches and has never engaged in diatribes against the West -- that is, not yet.

Many observers have concluded that First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who in all probability will become the next president in March, is a liberal. But it is a mystery to me why so many people sign on to this interpretation. It may be because Medvedev has a smooth, soft-spoken and intelligent way of speaking. In addition, he is not known for making hard-line speeches and has never engaged in diatribes against the West -- that is, not yet.

Moscow has turned into one huge marketplace in the run-up to the New Year's holiday. Judging from the traffic jams in the city, and especially those near supermarkets, the scale of this year's shopping bonanza will set a new record.

Moscow has turned into one huge marketplace in the run-up to the New Year's holiday. Judging from the traffic jams in the city, and especially those near supermarkets, the scale of this year's shopping bonanza will set a new record.