KREMLIN hardliners pushing for President Putin to serve a third term have been given a significant boost by an opinion poll indicating that 59 per cent of the population would support such a move.

Mr Putin, who took power in 2000, has promised to step down before the next presidential election, in 2008, because the Russian Constitution does not allow anyone to serve more than two consecutive four-year terms.

However, none of the potential successors identified so far has the popular appeal of Mr Putin, whose sobriety and steely manner have consistently won him approval ratings of higher than 70 per cent. And the Kremlin controls more than the two-thirds majority in the Duma needed to amend the Constitution to allow Mr Putin, 53, to stand for a third term. The poll by the respected Levada Centre suggested that 59 per cent would support that move, compared with 44 per cent last September.

“The Russian people are disinclined to let Putin go,” the centre said on its website, www.levada.ru . Only 32 per cent believed that Mr Putin would keep his promise not to run again, with 18 per cent predicting that his retinue would persuade him to change his mind. Another 18 per cent agreed that he “will likely see that there are no other deserving candidates and will agree to run for a third term”.

Analysts said that the poll reflected Russians’ disillusion with democracy and desire to prolong the relative political and economic stability that they have enjoyed since 2000. The survey also comes amid signs of a power struggle between two main factions in the Kremlin — those who worked with Mr Putin in St Petersburg in the 1990s, and the siloviki, or former members of security organs. Factional lines are blurred but , generally speaking, the St Petersburgers favour an orderly transition of power, while the siloviki want Mr Putin to stay on to preserve stability.

Boris Gryzlov, the Duma Speaker and Interior Minister, who is seen as a siloviki sympathiser, said yesterday that Mr Putin might be elected for a third term, but not in 2008. “It would be wrong to amend the Constitution to suit a particular person,” he said. “In line with the Constitution, he can become President for a third term, but not a third term in a row.” His comments lent credence to the theory that Mr Putin would allow a protégé to take over for four years, before returning to power in 2012.

So far only two people have emerged as potential successors, Sergei Ivanov and Dmitri Medvedev. Mr Ivanov, 52, the Defence Minister, is a former KGB officer from St Petersburg and has known Mr Putin since the 1970s. Mr Medvedev, 40, who is the chairman of Gazprom, the state gas monopoly, is a lawyer who worked with Mr Putin in St Petersburg in the 1990s and was his Kremlin chief of staff until recently.

The pair were simultaneously promoted to be deputy prime ministers in November in what was seen as the start of the leadership struggle. The Levada Centre poll suggested that Mr Medvedev was the more popular, with an approval rating of 10.3 per cent, second only to Mr Putin, on 77 per cent. It rated Mr Ivanov fourth on 7.2 per cent, behind Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist politician. However, Mr Medvedev is widely considered to be too diffident and lacking in the leadership qualities required for the top job.

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