“To me, it seems to be a perfect illustration of the feudal nature of Russian politics. A baron gets too full of himself, and gets smacked down by the king.“
Well, Craig, given your uncanny similarity to your role model Sarah Palin, I don’t expect you to be aware of a newspaper called “New York Times”. However, if you visit their web site, you will find an article there on the Medvedev-Luzhkov altercation. In particular, it says:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/world/europe/24moscow.html
But a slight jab at President, Dmitri A. Medvedev could now bring the mayor’s once inviolable authority to ruin. In a recent article, Mr. Luzhkov appeared to criticize the president for indecisiveness, while seeming to call for his predecessor, Vladimir V. Putin, now prime minister, to return to the presidency.
“He intended to try to push a wedge between Medvedev and Putin,” said Gleb O. Pavlovsky, a political consultant who advises the Kremlin.
“As the elections approach, there are people in the presidential administration who are afraid that the mayor will support not President Medvedev, but Prime Minister Putin,” she said in an interview with the Russian news magazine, The New Times, published this week.
In other words, Medvedev took his shots at Luzhkov for the latter’s support for Putin for president in 2012.
Yes, the Russian politics are still feudal, but your thinking that Medvedev is the all-powerfull “king” is sadly mistaken: Putin is still the biggest king, but this last incident gives pro-european-minded Russians hope that Medvedev is finally beginning to fight against the Putin cabal.
