Putin returns to Kremlin with Russia at crossroads

RUSSIA: Vladimir Putin Monday takes office for a third term as Russia's president at a pivotal moment in its post-Soviet history, with his supporters expecting landmark reform but the opposition fearing stagnation.

Putin is to be sworn in at a grand ceremony in the Kremlin that will see him return to the post he held from 2000-2008 but, ruling a Russia changed by the outburst of mass protests against the authorities.

Dmitry Medvedev, the outgoing president now mocked as a mere Kremlin seat warmer for the last four years, is expected to take on Putin's current job of prime minister in a job swap that angered the protestors.

Putin presided over a new era of stability in Russia in his first two Kremlin terms after taking over amid the chaos that marked the rule of the mercurial Boris Yeltsin.

But society is now changing at a speed unseen since the Soviet collapse: a burgeoning middle class increasingly critical of the Kremlin and the Internet providing a new channel for criticism away from turgid state media.

Protests in Moscow against Putin's domination of Russia and fraud-tainted December parliamentary elections at their peak drew over 100,000 people in Moscow and threw down an unprecedented challenge to the authorities.

Rather than the parliamentary opposition leaders who hardly bothered to criticise Putin in the last years, the protests were inspired by a new set of Internet-savvy figures such as the anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny.

In his last address to parliament in April before he steps down as prime minister, Putin admitted that the election period had been “tense” but said he expected unity from all political forces.

The sting has slipped for the moment from the tail of the opposition protests, with their honeymoon period over and their leaders trying to bridge differences between a motley crowd of leftists, nationalists and liberals.

While Putin won a crushing 63.6 percent in the March 4 presidential elections, the opposition said his rating was boosted by dirty tricks by the authorities. They claim discontent is still seething. AFP