Programme européen chargé pour le prochain président russe[en] 

With the Putin years largely characterised by tensions and conflicts, the EU hopes for progress in various fields, ranging from energy security (EurActiv 17/10/07), trade (EurActiv 18/02/08), Kosovo - whose independence Russia refuses to recognise (EurActiv 15/02/08) - or Iran's nuclear programme, over which Russia has taken a far more cautious stance than the EU and the US.

However, hopes for change remain limited as it is most likely that Deputy Prime Minister and Gazprom chairman Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, from Putin's United Russia party, will win after being strongly endorsed by Putin. 

Putin is not allowed to run for a third consecutive term as president, but has already expressed his intention to remain in a leading position, the most likely scenario being that he will become prime minister under President Medvedev. 

Critics are express their concern that Medvedev will simply act as Putin's marionette: "As was the case for Putin, he [Medvedev] will first have to accommodate the outgoing elite's strongest group, the Sechin clan," said Andrew Wilson, a Russia expert from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). 

"While Medvedev might appear a business-friendly, liberal reformer, he remains the product of a political system that is shaped solely by elite interest and 'political technologists'," Wilson pointed out. 

The other three names on the ballot will be Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party, Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic party, and Andrey Vladimirovich Bogdanov, the head of Russia's Democratic party. However, none of them are considered to have a realistic chance of victory, with polls showing 70% of Russian voters in favour of Medvedev.

Other promising candidates such as Michail Michailowitsch Kasjanow have been excluded from the race by the Russian authorities, mostly for dubious reasons. 

"The real choice of alternatives is limited at best," the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) pointed out, adding that "once again, we are witness to the repetition of the flaws" from the parliamentary elections last December, which inspired a chorus of international criticism (EurActiv 04/12/07). 

The Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) and several other organisations have already declared that they will not send election observers due to the severe restrictions planned on their operations in terms of length of the observation period and the number of observers. Russia countered these accusations by saying that the OSCE was trying to sabotage the elections.