Pick of the Month: The FT must be proud of its man in Moscow, Neil Buckley, for his insightful reporting on Putin’s hand-picked successor, Dmitry Medvedev. Among several stories filed is one posted 12/11/07, in which Buckley suggests the 42-year-old Chairman of state gas monopoly Gazprom is a “modernizer” rather than a liberal willing to roll back some of Putin’s “hyper-centralisation,” and is expected to focus his efforts on delivering a planned $1,000bn investment in upgrading Russia’s transportation and other infrastructure. Perhaps even more noteworthy is the fact that Medvedev is not from the military/security camp but rather from the Russian bureaucracy, indicating that Putin’s succession plan—seen as proceeding smoothly by outsiders—may actually be quite the opposite, according to Buckley. One Moscow analyst ominously says that Medvedev can look forward to serious attacks by warring factions in the military/security establishment.

See the story at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/80e5e8a8-a81d-11dc-9485-0000779fd2ac.html