Medvedev has tried to borrow some feasible proposals from several expert reports that have appeared in the last few weeks.
As for the investment climate, the implementation of Medvedev’s directives appears to have had little effect. Each of his proposals may be a step in the right economic direction but they also signify a deepening split in the political leadership. There is a distinguishable desperation in Medvedev’s efforts at re-inventing himself as a real president in the final stretch of his term. He has been attempting to exploit the “sick-and-tired” mood that grows both among the conformist elites and the disenchanted electorate, while Putin has refused to acknowledge these immaterial feelings and remains supremely confident in his message of stability. Medvedev’s problem is that his enervation and irrelevance has been one of the key reasons for this deepening disappointment in the stagnating Putinism, preventing him from becoming a credible messenger of change.
