President Vladimir Putin ended months of speculation yesterday by naming Dmitry Medvedev, a 42-year-old economic liberal, as his preferred candidate to win Russia's presidential election next year.
The move all but guarantees that Mr Medvedev, a first deputy prime minister, will win overwhelmingly in the poll on March 2nd.
"I have known him very closely for more than 17 years and I completely and fully support this proposal," Mr Putin said, during a meeting with leaders from four parties who announced they were all backing Mr Medvedev's candidacy.
Mr Medvedev, a former St Petersburg lawyer, is regarded as more liberal and less hawkish towards the west than Sergei Ivanov, Russia's other first deputy prime minister, who was also a frontrunner for the job.
Mr Putin is expected to retain influence over Russia's security services, including the military and the Federal Security Bureau or FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, which he headed before becoming president in 2000.
Unlike Mr Putin, Mr Medvedev has no links with the security services. The president, who has to step down in May, has made it clear he intends to "influence" his successor, and has not ruled out returning to the Kremlin at some point.
"It's quite obvious that Medvedev won't be the almighty president that Putin used to be," said Fyodor Lykyanov, editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Foreign Affairs.
Sergei Markov, a leading Kremlin analyst, said he expected three people to run the country after May: Mr Medvedev, Mr Putin and Viktor Zubkov, the prime minister.
"Medvedev's ideology is liberal patriotism," Mr Markov said. "He is more liberal than Ivanov. He has no experience of working with law enforcement agencies, who will tend to see Putin as their main political chief."
Western diplomats were hopeful yesterday that a Medvedev presidency could lead to a rapprochement between Russia and the West, after a year which has seen disagreements over Kosovo, missile defence and the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London.
Mr Medvedev has no experience of foreign affairs. A rare speaker of English, his only appearance on the international stage was earlier this year at the annual economic forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.
He is largely known abroad through his chairmanship of the state gas giant Gazprom. He has taken an uncompromising line in negotiations with Russia's neighbours over gas prices.
Yesterday Mr Putin said Mr Medvedev's candidacy represented "an administration that will carry on the same policies that have brought us results for the past eight years".
His United Russia party is expected to nominate Mr Medvedev at a party congress on Monday. After that there are no serious obstacles between him and the presidency.
Nevertheless, yesterday's announcement was a surprise. Recent speculation had suggested that Mr Putin would endorse either Mr Ivanov or Mr Zubkov.
"The majority of Russia's political analysts thought it was going to be Zubkov," Lilia Shevtsova, a senior associate at Moscow's Carnegie centre said. "Over the last month Medvedev was nowhere to be seen. He was sitting in his lonely government office."
Asked why Mr Putin had picked him, she said: "He has proved many times that he is loyal. But he isn't a silovik [ a member of Russia's security agencies]."
Several other candidates have said they will contest the election. They include the veteran communist leader Gennady Zyuganov and Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion and leader of the opposition coalition the Other Russia. - ( Guardian service)