Russian power-switching operation, 2008

In 2008 during the Russian Presidential election Dmitry Medvedev was elected President (head of the executive branch) with 73% of votes. He had been nominated as a candidate by four Russian political parties and made a promise to appoint Putin for the position of Prime Minister during the campaign.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, while holding a constitutionally less significant position, continued to be ranked as a somewhat more popular politician (83% of approval vote in January 2009) than President Dmitry Medvedev (75% of approval vote in January 2009).

According to opinion polls conducted by the Levada Center, in January 2009, 11% of Russia's respondents believed it was Medvedev who had the real power in Russia, 32% believed it was Putin, 50% thought that both Medvedev and Putin had the real power, and 7% answered "did not know". In February 2008, prior to the Presidential election, 23% people had believed Medvedev had the real power in the country, 20% thought Putin had the real power, 41% thought Putin and Medvedev had equal shares of power, 16% did not answer. While the number of people who thought that Medvedev was the number had halved, also Putin's approval rating had dropped to 48% from 62% for the same period.

Commentators, analysts and some politicians concurred in 2008 and early 2009 that the transfer of presidential powers that took place on May 7, 2008, was in name only and Putin continued to retain the number one position in Russia's effective power hierarchy, with Dmitry Medvedev being a figurehead or "Russia’s notional president".

Within the context of the ongoing Russia–Ukraine gas dispute in early January 2009, Nikolai Petrov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center said: "What we see right now is the dominant role of Putin. We see him as a real head of state. ... This is not surprising. We are still living in Putin's Russia."

On February 1, 2009, an analytical piece in The International Herald Tribune said: "Putin is still considered Russia's paramount leader, but by taking the title of prime minister, he may have deprived himself of a fall-guy-in-waiting. That role traditionally has gone to Russia's prime ministers; Yeltsin repeatedly dismissed his during the 1998 default. So far, Putin has instead made a scapegoat of the United States, saying it was at the heart of Russia's crisis, rather than Moscow's over-reliance on the export of natural resources."

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