Wouldn’t like to put any names forward at the present time- it is too much like Kremlinology of old. The new hopefuls come and go, only the people remain, as Putin almost said, almost quoting Stalin. Think Sergei Ivanov is probably a bit too high-profile, too much of a “political” figure. He might make a fairly decent Pres, but my guess would be a more adminstrative/technocratic figure, perhaps with some involvement with United Russia, and/or perhaps with some other background in the state apparatus.

And this essentially non-democratic (but – also more or less consensual – as the “liberal”/pro-business opposition are generally discredited and out-of-touch with most of the electorate, while the post-communist/CPRF/Motherland types are fractuous, and the LPDR are not really a cohesive force, and, except perhaps in a couple of oblasts, never were, have little to offer beyond occasional wild rants and policy-floating measures) probably reflects what a significant proportion of Russians would want to happen with regard to the leadership of their country.

Of course, other things could intervene: the North Caucasus isn’t likely to get any more stable, thanks to current policies, and the more recent clamp-downs on Finno-Ugric peoples/cultures could provide a new source of dissent elsewhere.

But I’d say that a genuinely multi-candidate election (ie. one where the result is not highly predictable in advance) in 2008 is as unlikely as a Russian “colour revolution”, not least because the reputation of those that occured in Georgia (especially) and Ukraine, never high in RUssia, may well be worse, internationally too.

But more generally, I think that it is too soon to be looking seriously at Presidential candidates. Like Venichka, I don’t think current analysts have any greater idea of who will be the next Russian President than Kremlinologists of old had any idea of who would become the next leader of the Soviet Union.

I’d imagine that, right now, pretty much every politician, and senior public figure in Russia is casting one eye on the 2008 election and assessing his chances. The biggest question they’ll be asking themselves is probably whether they would be best served by ingratiating themselves with the current administration in the hopes of becoming the ‘official’ candidate, or whether they think the chances of standing on a ‘revolutionary’ ticket are stronger.

I’d have to say that, as things stand today, my best assessment is that the next President will come from within the current Kremlin circle, but at the same time we have to remember that this is Russia, where two years in politics is the equivalent of several eternities in the real world, so I wouldn’t bet the house on it.