As Putin hits campaign trail, is Medvedev jealous? ANALYSIS 09/10/2010

As Putin hits campaign trail, is Medvedev jealous?

ANALYSIS

09/10/2010
MOSCOW — A dangerously close encounter with a 30-ton grey whale. Dousing fires in the country’s worst ever heatwave. A 2,000- kilometer road trip across remote eastern Siberia.

Even for Russia’s tough-guy Prime Minister Vladimir Putin it was a summer out of the ordinary.

The prime minister’s unprecedented, action-packed 10-day tour of Siberia heralded the start of an election marathon whose winner will likely rule Russia for over a decade, Russian observers and media say.

“A feeling that Vladimir Putin has started an election campaign is getting stronger not by the day — by the hour,” mass-circulation newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets said.

But while Putin was wielding a crossbow on the Pacific Ocean or meeting his match in the shape of a wild bear, President Dmitry Medvedev conspicuously got on with the much more dour business of the presidency with little spectacle.

Rather than pitting himself against the Russian wilderness, Medvedev was pictured in his shirtsleeves grappling with the problems of farming or industry. His most high-profile stunt was a meeting with U2 singer Bono..... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100910com7.html