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Minutes after the polls closed on March 2 in the westernmost Russian city of Kaliningrad--certifying a blowout victory by presidential candidate Dmitri Anatolyevich Medvedev, handpicked heir to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin--the men of the hour made an appearance at a massive concert underway in Red Square. As broadcast by NTV, a television channel owned by Gazprom (where Medvedev chairs the board of directors), the scene looked like something out of Mission: Impossible. A low-placed camera tracked alongside Putin and Medvedev, dressed Kremlin Casual in a boxy leather jacket (Dima) and a parka (Volodya), as they strode, to a rock beat, across the convex cobblestone expanse of the square. The shot's director, perhaps taking another cue from Tom Cruise movies, had removed background extras or anything else the eye could use to calibrate the heroes' heights: Medvedev is 5'4" to Putin's 5'7". The action duo climbed onto the stage, and Medvedev--a professed headbanger who had had a box reserved at the Led Zeppelin reunion show in London on the day Putin named him his successor--got to live out a rock 'n' roll moment. He grabbed the mic and yelled "Privet, Rossiya! Privet, Moskva!" (the Russian equivalent of "Hello, Cleveland"). The square went wild. His fervor subsiding, the president-elect segued into an anodyne victory speech about the need to "fortify stability" and "improve quality of life." The crowd began chanting "Con-grats! Con-grats!"--an unusually impersonal choice of a mantra. Medvedev passed the microphone to his benefactor, and the chant immediately changed. "Pu-tin! Pu-tin! PU-TIN!!!" Medvedev politely smiled.
