For nearly 70 years, Russians have relished Churchill's description of their country as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. But Russian politics is rapidly shedding its veils.

Nothing could be more transparent than Vladimir Putin's project to return to the Kremlin. President Medvedev, the protégé who has lived up handsomely to every forecast that he would be his mentor's mouthpiece, submitted a Bill to the Duma yesterday to extend the President's term from four to six years, while still allowing for two consecutive terms. The legislative process has been unaccountably accelerated, so that an idea first floated in a speech last week could be law by Friday, with all three parliamentary readings compressed into one day.

Mr Putin has all but announced his intention to use the change to stage a spectacular return for a further 12 years. It was “too early” to say whether he would run; there was “no personal dimension” in the new law which, he said, was passed solely “to improve structures of state rule”. Not much mystery or enigma there.

Mr Putin's Kremlin cronies, not to mention the 80 per cent of Russians who continue to vote him the most popular politician, will rejoice; a few brave voices will mutter about a stitch-up and a return to dictatorship. Most people will have no opinion other than those presented to them by the state-controlled media.

The old ways are enduring. Russia is slipping back into Third World habits, joining Algeria, which scrapped the two-term limit for the president yesterday . The six-year term will not apply to Mr Medvedev. But then, Mr Putin never went away. Democracy and Russia are the clear losers.