relieving cheers up our state here in the south of the twenty fourth of september be watching r t in the main new story from us tonight the ruling tandem is set for rotation russia's probably somebody in a political one for the presidency next year is kind of this he was put forward by the meeting and by that we've turned agreed to lead the ruling party of the country's government so that war on today's main events in the late edition of people of the page show crosstalk is just made for years and it's coming right up.

welcome to crossfire guy people about russia's great political parlor game has come to an end president dmitri medvedev announced he would support let me put in scanner to see succeed him in next year's presidential poll was this the plan all along is a good idea and what what is called the panda carry continue to work. to crosstalk russia's political future i'm joined by fred we're here in the studio with me he is the moscow correspondent for the christian science monitor adrian pap's in cambridge he's a lecturer in politics of the university of kent and in london we cross a jonathan steele he is the international affairs commentator for the guardian all right gentlemen this is crosstalk that means you can jump in anytime you want but first marshall wanted to walk us through about what happened at united russia's convention that's right peter the guessing game is officially over

a prime minister in the set to run for president in two thousand and twelve election is kinda endorsed at the united russia party convention by incumbent president. so if you don't put it less when you're given the proposal to have the electoral lists of the party united russia i'm to do some party work and on condition of good performance in the parliamentary elections and my readiness for practical work in government i believe it would be right for the congress to support the come to the city or flock to me or pretty soon not in the presidential election the announcement and speculation about the trajectory of russian's election cycle and reassures russia's partners around the world concerned with political risk. i'd like to express my gratitude to you for supporting my candidacy to run for president it's a great honor the only choose. one has already served two terms as president. before midnight of to go over the job in two thousand and eight addressing saturday's convention puts it in terms of just going to take over the role as the

next prime minister if the party performs well in parliament elections in december that you're going to get the numbers and with the parliamentary elections coming i would like to ask russian citizens to support the united russia party with the. recent constitutional amendments have extended the presidential term from four to six years which means that if prime minister putin is elected president in two thousand and twelve he could be in office until twenty twenty four back to you peter thank you very much for that matter first i'd like to go to jonathan any surprises for you that mr it is an doorstep of prime minister putin to succeed him nervous no surprise at all it was always assumed that this would happen and i think it is actually confirmed that this was the plan already from a long time back i think the main disappointment will be with vidya because he had shown in the last few months that he was actually rather enjoying being president and still hope that there might be some change of plan. sergeant he could carry on

as president well that's obviously not going to happen well. about that well it will he'll become prime minister so continuity continuity and a lot more continuity than well that sounds like a nice idea but politics doesn't quite work like this this is about legitimacy and credibility and i don't think by just changing positions they're ruling time can preserve that support is already crumbling and they need to do more than just swap jobs well i mean supporters of support for whom for united russia or for the naysayers or a lot of your putin. wealthy knight said russia is a possible also for modernization and there is clear desire that i put the implementation has been extremely slow and only very partial so the question is will president who's in the future president putin gave the government any real power to implement policies that stamp out corruption it's not looking like that's ok fred. you are we talked earlier you're not surprised at all that you think this

is more about the parliamentary election this is the timing of it all because we all knew it was i started out the program this was a parlor game everybody's been talking about it for months but it you know the united russia party is low in the polls or not as high as it used to be and they need a superstar to come out in really inflate their numbers because going into the election in december they don't have the same kind of strength that they used to i i frankly don't know why they decided to do this now the script of the putin year usually had announcing the president after the elections after they've got some signals because the system as it's constructed right now doesn't give a lot of signals from below i mean reliable signals that the people higher up can understand. so i guess it's clear it is clear to everybody that united russia is in trouble politically it's it's you don't have to go very far to hear

people speaking in awfully cynical tones about the party and frankly that's the system that it dominates and it represents there is a clear palpable disaffection creeping in it's not rebellious. it's not really people are ready to go into the streets but the tone is really different than it was in the last election cycle and probably this has been picked up they feel like they need to do more intense stage craft maybe for the duma elections but but frankly. i think that i mean we. it's not that you know russia won't win the duma elections i think the number to watch is voter turnout yes to have said in the past that probably the biggest fear would be mr apathy there jonathan if i can go back to you i mean i can see some of the some of the questions that. i could see coming from all of you on the panel here but it to fact

of the matter is mr putin is genuinely very popular in russia and going through some of the all of opinion polls which are considered the most reliable here he comes out consistently is the most popular by a long shot politician in this country well that's true and that's always been the case but i think the numbers have gone down a bit yes they have i think the comeback for that one of the points that fred made of our writers are doing it now i think in a way pushing the sidestepping bar getting amid video indorsed as the head of the ticket so that if in the december elections the united russia party does much less well than before madrid or forget the blame or rather than putin so he's trying to lift himself above the battle i think and if i can may even be keeping in reserve the option if united russia does badly but i think everybody says it will still win but not even having a very different prime minister in future saying well he didn't do well enough in the election we'll have to find somebody else. adrian go ahead you want to jump in . but i think that's exactly right it is

a master stroke by putin once again he's getting out of parliamentary politics just when it's getting difficult not just in terms of united russia but also in terms of the economy and society. ok it's apathy and if there's real votes you know this contend with the government and we're ready to presidential candidates well it's very interesting finding you know we again going back to a conversation we had earlier i mean coming back to the presidency right now when we look at international events going on i mean there's a political tsunami financial tsunami anomic tsunami going on around the world and here mr putin is going to come back into the fray i mean this is something that he thinks he feels it's necessary to do because that he has a trusted circle around him but he's built up over the years i mean you know coming back and. having the country in these times is that it's maybe a noble idea but it could be difficult as well i think that what we saw pretty clearly displayed at the united russia congress was that. putin is very much

a prisoner of the system he built he did build it there are a lot of accomplishments to that system it restored stability in this country after a really disastrous decade. he brought in a semblance of law and order. and you know whether it was high oil prices or not he also from ways of redistributing income. creating infrastructure projects so a lot can be said for that pump and decade and the stabilization that it brought in but he also you know it is the nature of this kind of power system that you surround yourself with groups and supporters and and people who who do execute orders also have their piece of the pie and they depend on you it's personal relationships the kind of it's often called clan relations but they are of vital importance in the sense that it's all right now i mean it's all we've heard

today if you can if i'm going to jonathan here. mr putin was made it very clear that he wanted a mr me bit of come back as prime minister with a new team now maybe kind of reading the tea. he leaves there mr medvedev whole modernisation program will probably continue only as prime minister so some of the objectives that we saw that mr meant but it did a lot of people in the west had hoped for maybe maybe too much or because they prefer the softer touch of mr made better over mr putin but there is an obvious indication that the country has to continue modernizing it cannot continue with the same kind of political system and economic approach that it has had for the last decade. modernizing what happened in modernizing the political system no it's going to be a version of the with the pointed governors the raising of the threshold where they're not in the process says it's not it's not appointment it was there is a center that's a that's a myth that actually they are confirmed through local committees in each region but i

a lot of people would say that that was necessary to keep the country together that's part kartik part of the process of keeping the states sovereign what do you think about that adrian i mean there where is the next step here i mean or that is are just treading water because well mr made bed it was talking about liberalizing the the political system or having more representative having parties more representative by lowering the election threshold i think that's going to continue . well i think we have to wait and see rather skeptical the trouble is that it's putin's policies for ten years or so have been entirely statist he doesn't trust independent business and he doesn't trust civil society i think president did was trying to strengthen private business the rule of law and civil society but of course he had not enough room of maneuver he didn't have enough power to implement this and so i think we're heading back to statism the troublous state capitalism doesn't work much better than free market capitalism well free market capitalism isn't doing very well in the west and i suppose it's

good if you continue debating how much role the state does play in here and there but there is there is there needs to be more competition here this is one of the reasons why there have been this privatization drive i don't know if it's going to be postponed now because of the turbulence outside but still breaking up some of the monopoly service is still on schedule i suppose so but i think that modernization political system as jonathan said is a crucial thing you know democracy isn't just a pretty face system ensuring that people who come up are have to have some kind of credit they have to be able to muscle their way into power through some legitimate system and we've seen this narrowed to such an extent that in the long run i think it's dysfunctional i don't want to say it's soviet like or something like that but if we're looking at twelve more years of this. this.

ability can turn into real stagnation if you know you're going to get a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on russian politics today with our three. in the far away land where human life is ruled by nature. the distant ancestor of planet earth is scarcely preserved by the per. inch anonymous lie hidden in the deep permafrost. and for those and deal with them restored times are still not the. very first verses of the bible to all human beings are created myths out of it all came

in god's image and it doesn't say just jews or god is. sixty to seventy percent of what i did as a combat soldier in the occupied territories was to do with the turds doing what we call making our presence so you go out should some bozo they hear a knock on some doors from the other corner and they don't know the house or religion or nationalism not as good as them have been a part of the problem they've been part of what leads to. bloodshed a few more and all guys out and kill a thousand four hundred people in a month and you want to expect that this will have no effect until if he has to be either extremely naive or it's from a school community not sitting on. a stool religious jew calling another job and not an out of the way they really know that money.

is fifty feet. just to meet. welcome back to crossfire graham people call to mind you were talking about the return of vladimir putin to the presidency. ok jonathan if i can start off with you again how do you think the international community is going to see this the return of

a putin presidency because i said as i pointed out earlier in the program the west seemed to like a lighter touch of mr medvedev do you think about that well no i think they'll see this as basically continuity but i mean i think the disappointing thing really is that russia is still very reactive in its foreign policy i mean under yeltsin it was very much during the west's bidding and certainly under putin it's now become less predictable and more nationalistic and that's fine from a russian point of view but they're still negative i think on syria that i'm on sanctions on iran they don't want sanctions but they're not really taking initiatives what do you do about iran what do you do about syria on the palestinian issue which is so topical this week why wasn't the russia didn't take a strong initiative and say they really support the palestinians and it's time to break i don't know john i think the russians would be supporting the palestinians for twenty years in the new russia very very firmly mr medvedev even went to ramallah and said he supports statehood that was a few months ago i would say russia's foreign policy is extremely low in face very

can a very conservative now reactive what do you think about that adrian do you think that the in the capitals of europe they're going to be happy to see mr putin back what you think about mr maybe i don't know for mr obama is going to be back in office what do you think. well very much doubt because the lasting impression that putin gave when he was last president was the security speech in munich in two thousand and seven when he was very blunt and not only. the nouns to american a gemini but also essentially brand that the rest of europe is pretty much useless so i don't know maybe that was a pretty good description i mean how things are played out right here and i was the munich conference i remember it extremely well and i could point out to my viewers that it was it was it could be very well received here in russia is that russia will have its own foreign policy and not kowtow to the united states and other by our powers of united nations is the kind of reaction what you said earlier jonathan a lot of people in russia do not like how the libyan resolution was played out

where you can just do whatever you want abuse international law and still we saw a very strong strong support for the palestinians and if that irritates western powers and so be it that's russia's foreign policy what do you think right i don't think they'll be any changes in russian foreign policy i think that there has been a continuous. growth in russia's self-confidence on the world stage. i think they could be more they could use the weight that they've got more coherently but i also don't think they'll be major problems with people accepting another point in the presidency i think we more or less expected all along and putin is predictable he's not a particularly capricious person or given to excesses he sticks to his script. and that's awfully important in the system where so much power is invested in one personality so important domestic and putin that he has this known quantity and a fairly predictable moderate sort of character. no i think i'm not sure that's

true fred's going to be about yeah if you think about international trade or you think about cooperation with me you know even bilateral relations i mean you. lots of politicians don't just implement progressive policies i think can be pragmatic pads he also said you know more than the streak and i don't think one could say thoroughly predictable and reliable oh wait well if you look at compare putin with medvedev i mean look at the ga ga ga's aggression against south of thirty i mean we still saw a lot of continuity in russian foreign policy putin would have done exactly the same thing as i got to you jonathan which you might have gone further. or the guy that's interesting i think to try to go in there jonathan what do you think about it do you think that. someone like mr saakashvili is going to be worried again because or we look at politics in ukraine i mean if if adrian is right which i disagree with very strongly i think there's been

a continuity from putin through medvedev in we'll probably see it again also with putin because russia's national interest change even if the president changed his. well i agree with that i think there will be many continuity and i think russia's relations with children are really present and i'm very clear majority of made it clear that as long as saakashvili is there still in charge in georgia there can be no real breakthrough in woman up of relations on ukraine of course since the change in our year or so ago they're very happy with what's going on in ukraine that's not true anymore neural checkpoint the issue of ukraine joining the nature and joining nato has been kicked russian for a long grass that's missed not going to happen soon free money you would if you want to you know i just think the main thing that will happen is what the process and see happening in our brains right now is we're all going to become a lot more cynical about the nature of the russian system you know what we saw at the united russia call it called versus you know if everybody's going well how do you well it is this is going in the popularity now i would i would grant you and i

grant everyone on the panel is that there are two major political figures in this country ok like it or not that's what we have gotten and the constitution has not been circumvented i mean the man's name is going to be on the ballot and you know what most people are going to vote for him so i mean where do you where do you how do you balance cynicism versus popular spread first read first go ahead for the first peter i lived five years in the soviet union and i didn't see anything quite completely different. in in this process really what we see is the ballot being narrow real choice since even if there are marginal and you don't have to vote real choice for two or or or eliminate it long before the ballots are printed and even that spectrum of kind of what i call puts him in choices or are narrowing and this is not a good thing for the long term health of the respectable what the population thinks of the electorate but i mean it's i'm sorry but that's the fact ok so what i'm

sorry but it's the fact that right up until the collapse of the soviet union you could even nobody voted for going to bunch off nobody voted for president they voted on the referee and they were in there and i didn't really know anyone who continued ok get a green go ahead jump in. well put in used to pride in self for having established a system that stable and a constitution that's respect but now in a single move he's essentially undermined that by returning after four years if you were serious about continuity and civility he would have allowed president mediators to run again and even if people say personnel doesn't matter much it's about the institutions now we have a president who's going to be leading the united party in the parliamentary elections this is not just blowing the boundaries this is now in fact to be undermining the institutions guaranteed by the constitution not necessarily of everything that john of you know pour into your head john i think the other point of six strong is that neither majority or for pushing the members of this party i

mean yes you must start rebuilding of a multi-party system and that means people must stand as a representative of the party members over to meetings not just once every four years but all the time regularly try to build up mobilize you know just to have be above the party is the old czarist model basically isn't it and unfortunately you're also into the same thing when he was there he always said oh i mean this is a time gentlemen maybe even you can agree or disagree for you should be part of the party but there is a multi-party system here i mean you can vote for the communist if you want to ok you can vote yet in the right there is ok there is a choice but i see only that's the only party that's not depend on the kremlin the fact is all the other parties have penned in some ways on the kremlin and what you really need in addition to a multi-party system is strong institution across the country russia has a strong central states an incredibly weak institutions in the rest of the country those need to be strengthened ok here here's the thing about the last few years under the bed of. introduced a different tone and sometimes even sounded like he was talking differently and

that gave rise to a lot of hopes and you know even in the bureaucracy and in academia camps formed over the last couple of years especially. even if it was assured from the store. a lot of people took it seriously and expected to express different opinions according to their vision of who these two guys were right or wrong and you saw that there was. there are not revolutionary i'm not talking about people in the street shouting i'm talking about within the mainstream of russian society there are different views of the way forward and the thing that has happened with the name of putin being proposed and put forward is that that's never back to what. it's not necessarily a bad thing as i said i don't think he was a bad leader he had a lot of accomplishments insisted another twelve years of him that gives this

signal not only to the russians which is they would like to ask all of you here as we wind up the program here first adrian do you think mr putin wants to come back or he has to come back because of the political environment that is so much attack associated with his time in politics wants to come back has to come back. i think it's both because he's a prisoner of the system but he clearly also has not been able to distract himself and to make room for something else so he depends on the support of groups just as those groups that had done him as a knob and so the family of the last word here well i don't know you know i as i said putin's a capable guy and he also knows the problems of the country. is he if he gets another six year term and i think we know he will will he use that to make a change and this is the basic point this country really needs some departure put instability was fine. but people are are getting impatient you know i hear it all

around they want changes in must know that so you know even from within that system to encourage the growth of civil society to bring in some evolutionary democratic reforms and to make some economic changes this is within his power let's not let's not say he can't do it i suppose we have no choice but to wait and see that's our job duties will be the business thing we believe in this program here we have to wait and see many things to get and i guess it in london cambridge and here in the studio and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at the phoenix time remember rostock. take it. easy.

twenty years ago when i just country. to sometimes with a sense of. what had been

a chain. which began a journey. where did it take the. very first verses of the bible that all human beings were created but some of it all came in god's image and it doesn't say just jews or not just. sixty to seventy percent of what i did as a combat soldier in the occupied territories was to do with the turds doing what we call making our presence so we go out should some bozo hear a knock on some doors from the other corner invade another house religion and nationalism not just judaism have been a part of the problem they've been part of what leads to. bloodshed if you want to bomb gaza and kill a thousand four hundred people in a month and you want to expect that this will have no effect until a few you have to be either extremely mad.