As Vladimir Putin cruises to an assured presidential victory, Russia's resilient protest movement has to demonstrate that it has the strategy to convert street energy into meaningful political change beyond March 4.

What do U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have in common? They are both fortunate in their presidential opponents.

Were today's Russian politics cast as a Hollywood movie, it could be a sequel to the legendary "Matrix" by the Wachowski brothers.

Perhaps unintentionally, President Dmitry Medvedev has cast a pall over the legitimacy of Vladimir Putin's expected coronation as president in March and strengthened the demand of the protesters in Moscow for a rerun of the State Duma elections.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is living his De Gaulle moment — a blinding mixture of stupefaction and anger that his country no longer wants him back as president.

Regardless of the final results for United Russia, which he led in Sunday's elections, President Dmitry Medvedev needs to think hard about his place in Russian history.

Perhaps a true measure of rulers' distrust of their people is when they choose to be more frank with foreigners and rush to tell them what they are not in a hurry to communicate to their fellow citizens.

Russia's ruling tandem seems to be blissfully unaware of the proverbial first rule of holes: When you are in a hole, stop digging!

In a prophetic speech in February, then-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin warned that Russia's modernization could only be carried out by a government that enjoys full political legitimacy from the Russian people and that such popular legitimacy could only be secured through genuinely competitive elections.

The most striking thing about the ruling tandem's succession decision is not that they had settled on this arrangement four years ago and have been merely faking it ever since, but the incredibly arrogant way that it has been presented to the Russian public.

It is good to know that Russia's ruling tandem pays attention to this column. Earlier this month, I suggested that since Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appeared to be returning to the Kremlin as president in 2012, he would be well advised to nominate President Dmitry Medvedev as his reformist prime minister so he would continue his program of modernization.

Can foreign policy serve as an indication of where things are heading within Russia's ruling tandem? A closer look at what's happening in relations with Ukraine provides insight into maneuverings within the tandem as it approaches the time to decide who will run for president.

It is the most anticipated political event in Russia. It drives its elites and its respective clans nuts. World leaders are watching it closely. Bets are being placed on it, and financial wizards have even devised complex financial instruments that are linked to its outcome.

The future of the U.S.-Russian "reset" could shape President Dmitry Medvedev and U.S. President Barack Obama's legacy in foreign affairs. But their venture is in need of an upgrade to acquire a sense of strategic purpose and direction.

Earlier this year, I argued that the best option for Prime Minster Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev was to quickly announce that they would maintain the tandem arrangement into Medvedev's second presidential term. Many in the West still hope and pray that this is what will happen in December. But it won't.

I have noticed that tandemocracy, while beneficial for Russia's internal development, may not be such a healthy arrangement for the country's foreign policy.

Two recent actions by President Dmitry Medvedev cast a pall over his credentials as a liberal modernizer and a crusader against corruption.

Amid the heated rhetoric in advance of the March presidential election, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is still lacking a viable rationale for returning to the Kremlin, while President Dmitry Medvedev's second term is looking increasingly purposeful.

Russia's political stars could not be better aligned for the early release of former Yukos owners Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev from prison.

It would be wrong to dismiss President Dmitry Medvedev as a lame duck after his news conference last week. All the signals Medvedev sent were the right ones, while his public performance was impressive and likable.

Even as President Dmitry Medvedev mulls over a re-election bid, here is what I am willing to bet will happen in the 2012 vote. On May 18, United Russia deputies in the St. Petersburg city legislature will strip Sergei Mironov, Federation Council speaker, of his mandate and top government job.

We have two distinct visions for the nation's future. One is Medvedev's "deep and broad modernization" — a Silicon Skolkovo Model. The other is Putin's "decade of stable and calm development without being thrown back and forth by ill-conceived experiments" based on liberal models.

Less than a year ago, it seemed almost natural that President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would meet in mid-2011 and decide quietly between themselves who would run for president in 2012. But as Selection Day draws nearer, it is getting harder to envision such a meeting.

With Prime Minster Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev publicly sparring over the UN resolution on Libya, an ominous question has begun to cloud Russia's political scene: Is the split in the tandem manageable or will it tear the country apart like in 1991?

Dmitry Medvedev's presidency from the beginning has been lacking a broad and persuasive political narrative. Medvedev should have tied together all the elements of his reformist agenda into a coherent vision of where he wants to take the country and what he asks the Russian people to do for it. But he has failed to turn "modernization" into such a narrative.

President Dmitry Medvedev, in a signal that he views missile defense talks with NATO as his top foreign policy priority, appointed Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's representative to NATO, as his special envoy for missile defense.

Medvedev is approaching a Gorbachev moment. He either makes the reset more of a two-way street, or he risks being portrayed as a U.S. stooge. Picking a territorial fight with Japan over the Kurils will not compensate for weakness with Washington.

The strategy presented by President Dmitry Medvedev at Davos last week is well-
intentioned and competently crafted.
But it said absolutely nothing about one thing most of the audience wanted to hear — the rule of law.

Vladimir Putin’s decision in 2007 not to change the Constitution to allow himself a third presidential term and his subsequent repositioning as the most powerful prime minister in modern Russian history with all the constitutional powers of a popularly elected president is perhaps the most under-recognized and undervalued contribution to the development of the country’s democracy.

It is hard to believe that Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks web site, ever intended to meddle in Russian politics, particularly in its most sensitive part — the presidential succession of 2012.