No summing up from Vladimir Putin. The next Presidential Address will be delivered by a new head of state

President Putin has delivered his eighth and last annual address. Since Putin wouldn't say who he wants as the successor, not even in his last Presidential Address, experts are having a field day discussing various options for Putin's own future employment.

Vladimir Putin's Presidential Address broke the taboo on mentioning the devastated YUKOS in official statements. Putin made it plain that he thinks everything done to the company was justified and denied any financial motives on the part of the state.

"The next Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly will be delivered by a new head of state," Putin announced. "I believe it would be inappropriate for us to evaluate our own performance here - and it's too soon for me to deliver any political testaments." The audience appreciated the jest.

Since Putin wouldn't say who he wants as the successor, not even in his last Presidential Address, experts are having a field day discussing various options for Putin's own future employment. Valery Khomyakov, general director of the National Strategy Council, assumed that Putin would concentrate on establishment of a stable framework of political parties in 2008. "He may even assume leadership in some new right-wing party," Khomyakov said.

Alexei Mukhin, general director of the Center of Political Information, saw in the Presidential Address an indication that Putin wants a docile and controllable successor. "Putin is building a political enclosure for his successor, a place where he can walk the successor like a dog," Mukhin added.

According to Konstantin Simonov, director of the National Energy Security Foundation, Putin has outgrown the presidential level and started thinking in terms of the global energy game. "Who his successor will be doesn't matter," Simonov said. "The successor will run Russia for Putin while Putin himself will handle tasks of global magnitude." The ex-president may even become the head of some global energy corporation like the so-called gas OPEC.

Public Chamber member Alexei Chadayev perceived only one message in the Presidential Address. "I need to do some more thinking," he said. "Putin is keeping up the suspense with regard to his own future. What he has done so far is draw the outlines of the impossible - that is, a third term in office." According to Chadayev, Putin is looking for an elegant way out that will enable him to step down as the president and remain in politics at the same time. "Where successors are concerned, I'd say that it is fairly obvious. It will be Ivanov if the national projects Medvedev is in charge of turn out to be a failure. It will be Medvedev if Ivanov fails in the sphere of the breakthrough in innovative technologies," Chadayev shrugged. "If both fails, then it will be someone else."

Pavel Krasheninnikov, chairman of the Duma's legislation committee, thinks otherwise. "Political death or oblivion is not an option - because Putin will remain the national leader in any case," he said. "He will remain an authority for the new generation of politicians regardless of what position he will be occupying."

Source: "RBC Daily", April 27,2007

Translated by A. Ignatkin