Did Dmitry Medvedev resign or was he pushed by Vladimir Putin?

Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, left, and President Vladimir Putin.

The decision by Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s longest serving prime minister, and his government to stand down was greeted with widespread surprise.

The move was almost certainly on President Putin’s orders. But if Mr Putin wanted to make a scapegoat of Mr Medvedev it is unclear why he chose yesterday, at the height of discontent over pension reforms.

There is growing anger in Russia over the grinding poverty and relentless charges of corruption. Mr Putin might have felt he needed new faces in government before the parliamentary elections due in September next year.

Those elections are seen as vital for Mr Putin’s attempt to remain in power after his final term of office ends in 2024. The Kremlin will want to avoid the kind of vote fraud that has provoked previous protests. Unless Mr Putin can turn around the economy, any “honeymoon” period the new government might enjoy is unlikely to last until the elections.

Mr Medvedev’s claim he “resigned” to make it simpler for Mr Putin to push through changes that would increase the power of the parliament and the State Council was also puzzling. Unless, of course, he was opposed to the reforms, as some in Moscow are speculating. The changes could help Mr Putin remain in power for life as prime minister or as head of a revamped State Council. Mr Putin has already ruled Russia for longer than anyone apart from Stalin, whose reign of terror lasted 31 years.

Although Mr Medvedev has been a loyal sidekick to Mr Putin for the past six years, he used his single term of presidency from 2008 to 2012 to promote a more liberal vision of Russia, as illustrated by his clumsy, if memorable, slogan: “Freedom is better than non-freedom.”

If Medvedev the mouse had one last roar we will never know.

Russian Tax Service chief Mikhail Mishustin, left, will replace Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

His replacement as prime minister is unlikely to offer any such grand statements on freedom.

Mikhail Mishustin, 53, the head of the tax service, has little political experience and his views are unknown. It is assumed that he is a Putin loyalist. His appointment as prime minister above such heavyweights as Vyacheslav Volodin, the parliamentary speaker, and Alexei Kudrin, the former finance minister, came as a shock. Even veteran Kremlin watchers admitted they had never heard of him.

“Mishustin has always been in the shadows,” Tatiana Stanovaya, head of the R-Politik political analysis firm, said.

Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin dine in Saint Petersburg.

Ms Stanovaya added, however, that the appointment of a technocrat such as Mr Mishustin was in keeping with Mr Putin’s strategies.

The president has twice previously surprised Russians by appointing unknown technocrats as prime minister — Mikhail Fradkov in 2004 and Viktor Zubkov in 2007.

Ms Stanovaya said that a prime minister with political ambitions would be appointed when it becomes clear who — if anyone — Mr Putin intends to install as his successor.

THE TIMES