On Monday Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he was backing his long-time colleague Dmitry Medvedev for the Russian presidential elections in early March, leaving the question of his own plans largely unanswered.

But on Tuesday, there was the clearest indication yet of how Putin envisages the future. In a three-minute statement broadcast on Russian state television Medvedev, who is currently deputy prime minister and Gazprom chairman, said he thought Putin should become prime minister after the elections.

"Having expressed my readiness to run for president of Russia, I appeal to (Putin) with a request to give his principal agreement to head the Russian government after the election of the new president of our country," Medvedev said. During the announcement, which was almost certainly approved by Putin, he added that, after the election, the country should continue to follow the policies Putin had introduced and developed over the last eight years.

The emerging scenario -- one that Putin had already hinted at months ago -- seems to be that of his preferred candidate taking over as president with Putin himself wielding considerable power as prime minister. But it is still not clear how this will work out in practice or how the role of prime minister will relate to the new president's. Will the new president be merely Putin's "puppet?" Or will he be a temporary successor who serves for a while before ceding place to Putin? Or will the president help usher in constitutional amendments that transfer more powers to the prime minister's office?

The German opinion pages on Tuesday deal largely with Monday's anointment  of Medvedev as the heir apparent and the question of how Putin will manage to hold on to power.

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"Until this Monday, Russians still didn't know that, on March 2, 2008, they will vote Dmitry Medvedev into the presidency…For years, the drama revolved around who would follow (Putin) as president. And now the carousel has come to an abrupt halt."

"Will the country continue to move in the direction of the West under Medvedev? Will there be more modernization and less muscle flexing? Both will most likely be the case in a Russia under Medvedev. But for the near future, the real threat is that Russia will remain under Putin as a sort of ... godfather figure. During the parliamentary elections, Putin already allowed himself to be called the 'national leader.' So it might be that Putin plans to treat his old companion Medvedev as his loyal proxy, once he's moved into the Kremlin. In such a case, there is the risk of unclear power relations. Putin should not forget that he too was once given with the role of puppet of the Yeltsin faction. And that didn't work either."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"Medvedev knows Putin's system of rule and, in fact, helped build it up…With a certain degree of certainty, you can say that Medvedev is a guarantee for the continuity of 'System Putin.'"

"The fact that the president has decided on a younger person and not for the recently appointed Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, who is not far from retirement age, indicates that Putin isn't seriously considering a return to the presidential seat after a transitional period. And it is a sure thing, too, that he doesn't wanted to be prime minister under Medvedev either. But maybe soon he'll take over from Medvedev the chairmanship of Gazprom's board of directors."

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung writes:

"At first glance, it is surprising that the nominee comes from among Putin's longtime confidantes but not from his circle of hawks and hardliners who have come to the Kremlin via the security apparatuses and the intelligence service. Medvedev's low-key and reserved appearance marks him as the opposite of Russia's ruling elite. But it would be completely wrong to take his election as signaling a change in direction. Medvedev may hold a few more liberal views than those in the cadre of the soviet-schooled intelligence service. But he is a long way from being a liberal who wants to steer Russia back toward reforms and introduce a new Perestroika based on purely democratic principles."

"Granted, Medvedev may shun close association with the Kremlin's uniformed faction. But he is an apparatchik and loyally obedient to Putin.... The Kremlin doesn't have any political or ideological factions any more. There are just different business interests."

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

"Medvedev's greatest advantage for his patron is that he has not yet shown any great political ambition of his own. The bland technocrat fulfils Putin's most important employment criterion: He'll be a good puppet that can be controlled from outside the Kremlin. By anointing the economics expert Medvedev, Putin is minimizing the danger that his successor will start to become unhappy with being a puppet as time goes on … And Putin's decision on Monday makes it likely that he is leaving open the option of returning to the Kremlin by means of the 2012 presidential election."

"However, for Putin the control freak, there remains an insecurity that should not be underestimated. Within a brief period, Medvedev will need to go from being an unknown to a highly celebrated candidate so that he can succeed in getting the majority he needs at the beginning of March and doesn't hand Putin an embarrassing defeat….The larger and less controllable danger for Putin, though, is this: Once he is president, a compliant Medvedev might just learn to like ruling and exercising power. From today's point of view, that might be hard to imagine. But Putin himself is the best example of how the position (of president) can change its occupant. Back in 2000, when Putin became a first deputy prime minister, he too was just a bland apparatchik. Today he is a hard-nosed power politician who doesn't take nonsense from anyone, especially not from his successor."

The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:

"It was apparently more important for Putin to position himself than for his successor to be appointed. But his position is still unclear. Will he be a super-president? Will he be a 'national leader?' Nobody knows. The root of the English word successor is success, and it means somebody who is handed success from somebody else. But as a triumphant successor, Dmitry Medvedev is surely miscast…Another round in the endless Russian guessing game of 'Who has power in the Kremlin?' is beginning. It's difficult to come up with a Russian general secretary or president who has thrown any light on that question and spared the rest of the world from having to ask it."