In Homeland Security’s Joseph Varner previews the upcoming power shift between Vladimir Putin and his anointed successor Dimitri Anatolyevich, detailing the new President’s background in the Russian legal and political communities and explaining why there will be little change in the country’s day-to-day leadership:

On foreign and national security policy, Medvedev is also likely to continue to follow Putin’s lead, and not just because he needs Putin’s support to remain in office. In truthm Medvedev and Putin see eye-to-eye on all the issues. Medvedev will continue to renew the projection of Russian power around the globe. He will resist attempts by other Eastern European countries to join NATO and will strenously oppose the deployment of American missile defence components in Poland and the Czech Republic. He will also take steps to re-assert Russia’s influence over the those states that formerly made up the Soviet Union. Most dangerous of all, he will continue Russia’s recent policy of staging aggressive strategic bomber patrols and ballistic missile tests. He will maintain or increase an already inflated level of defence spending and will continue to modernize his country’s military. Given his history with Gazprom, he can be expected to use energy as a strategic weapon. This will pose a significant challenge to those countries that have become so dependent on Gazprom to satisfy their energy needs.

All of this is to say that de facto power in Russia remains firmly in the hands of Vladamir Putin even if - for the time being at least - de jure power passes into the hands of one of his most trusted protégés.

And if all goes according to what appears to be the plan, that power will likely remain in Putin’s hands for a long time to come.