Web address hints at Putin 2012 Prez bid
Moscow, Sept. 17: A Russian government agency has registered the web address Putin-2012.rf in a sign Prime Minister Vladimir Putin plans to run in a presidential election he would seem almost certain to win.
Russia’s Federal Bodyguard Service registered six domain names combining Mr Putin’s name or initials with “2012,” according to the official Cyrillic domain database, stat.ref.ru. It did not do the same for President Dmitry Medvedev.
Mr Putin says he has not decided whether to run in 2012, saying he and Mr Medvedev will decide on a joint candidate closer to the time. But many diplomats and analysts expect him to return to the Kremlin, shunting Mr Medvedev into a lesser post.
“Nobody believes any more that Mr Medvedev will run, because Mr Putin seems to have started his campaign already,” said Alexei Mukhin, an analyst at the Centre for Political Information.
Mr Putin was President from 2000-08 and is widely regarded as Russia’s leader, despite the formal presidential structure of the system. He handpicked Mr Medvedev to succeed him after the end of his second consecutive Kremlin term, the maximum allowed by the constitution.
Mr Putin is eligible to stand again for a new term in 2012 and could potentially serve for 12 more years in a row, because the presidential term has been lengthened to six years from four.
He remains by far the most popular politician in Russia, though opponents accuse him of manipulating the system by control of the media and curbing the right to demonstrate.
Mr Putin’s chief spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that the web address was not an indication that the prime minister was planning a return to the Kremlin.
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