Putin hints at return to Russian presidency

EXPECTATIONS intensified yesterday that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin may run again for the Russian presidency after he drew a surprise comparison with four-term US president Franklin D Roosevelt. Speculation was rife over whether Putin or President Dmitry Medvedev would stand in the 2012 polls and Putin pledged that neither he nor the current president would do anything against the Russian constitution.

"There was an American president — Roosevelt — who was elected four times in a row because the law allowed it," Putin told an annual meeting of world experts on Russia known as the Valdai Club late Monday.

The comment was in response to a question about whether Putin's return to the Kremlin would be a positive step for Russian democracy.

Roosevelt served an unprecedented four terms as US president from 1933-1945, spanning the Great Depression to World War II, and dying just before the Allied victory over Nazi Germany.

Putin ruled Russia as president for the maximum two consecutive terms allowed by the constitution from 2000-2008 and then handed over to Medvedev, becoming a powerful partner in the ruling tandem. After a four-year break from the Kremlin, there is nothing to stop Putin standing for another two presidential terms.

"Neither me nor President Medvedev will do anything that runs counter to the basic law, the constitution of the Russian Federation," Putin said during a nearly two and a half hour dinner with the group in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. "We have talked about what we will do in 2011 or at the start of 2012 several times. We will act according to the real situation in the country, from what we have done, from the mood of the country," said Putin.AFP