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Russian president says 'tandem' with Putin efficient
Interfax
Moscow, 7 November: Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev believes his tandem with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is efficient.
"Nobody should have any doubt that our so-called tandem is working rather in harmony, despite predictions that we are going to fall out any time, predictions which are not being fulfilled, as you can see," Medvedev said in an interview with German magazine Spiegel.
Commenting on a remark by German journalists that Putin and Medvedev target different layers in Russian society, traditionalists and liberals, Medvedev said: "As for personal preferences, each person has his own views on whose ideas, behaviour or manner of delivery he likes best. This concerns Vladimir Putin and me as well."
"I would not like us to be perceived at some point as the senile leaders of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party Central Committee, who appeared on the Mausoleum in identical hats and coats, when it was impossible to tell who was Leonid Ilyich (Brezhnev) and who was Mikhail Andreyevich (Suslov)," the president said.
Commenting on the remark that the West and ex-USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev had been perplexed by Putin's statement about presidential elections in 2012, Medvedev said: "I would recommend that Mr Gorbachev should read Putin's words more carefully".
"He (Putin) said the following: if by the time of the next presidential election Vladimir Putin and Dmitriy Medvedev are still attractive for people as political figures, in this case we will sit down and discuss who will stand in the election, so that we do not hamper each other. He did not say that we would decide between ourselves who would be next president. That would be ridiculous," Medvedev said.
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