When President Dmitry Medvedev announced last September that he wasn’t going to run for a second term and nominated prime minister (and ex-president) Vladimir Putin (pictured) as the Kremlin’s next candidate, the fate of the presidential campaign seemed all but sealed. Liberal newspapers issued a unanimous groan, bloggers on Facebook and other social networks rushed to calculate how old they would be in 2024 when Putin’s two six-year terms in office would have expired, and ‘It’s time to scram!’ (ie emigrate) became the slogan of the day.
And then, somehow, at the end of 2011 things started to go in an unforeseen direction.
