Has Vladimir Putin just pulled the plug on Russian democracy? His announcement that he wants to become prime minister means that he will not, after all, leave office in March, as the Constitution requires. Instead, he will simply switch titles, move from the President’s office into the prime minister’s and continue his authoritarian rule.

Technically, he will break no law. Most Russians will be delighted: his popularity rating is still about 80 per cent. Those fearful of change and those who have enriched themselves in the past eight years want the good times to continue. But to bend constitutional arrangements to fit a single personality is worrying. Mr Putin insists that he wants to continue serving his country. But his plans simply underscore the fact that the real enemy of Russian democracy has always been a strong tsar.

Already the brief stirring of democracy during the chaotic Yeltsin years have given way to top-down authoritarianism. Opposition politics is now barely possible: rallies are broken up, antigovernment figures are kept off television, the press is muzzled, “enemies” meet a sticky end and all the focus is on what the Kremlin wants.

In recent months Russia has been preoccupied with Mr Putin’s future. Speculation was increased two weeks ago by his unexpected reshuffle, three months before the parliamentary elections, when he appointed Viktor Zubkov, an elderly and unknown politician, as the new Prime Minister. Was he a temporary figure, keeping the seat warm for Mr Putin? Or was he himself being groomed as a presidential candidate, much in the way that Boris Yeltsin groomed the unknown Mr Putin?

Today the answer is clear. Mr Putin will take over the job himself. That at least will give him a proper base for continued influence. The effect, of course, will be simply to reverse the balance of power. In future the prime minister will call the shots, while the president will find his power severely limited. And after four years Mr Putin could come back again as President (which is possible under the Constitution). And the balance of power would be reversed again.

Mr Putin’s future was virtually the only issue in his recent meeting with The Times and other Western journalists and academics. The 54-year-old gave a blunt warning that he had no intention of becoming a pensioner. He was young and still fit, he said, and wanted to play a role. “This will be a factor with which any future president must reckon, and we must agree how we will function.”

At the same time, he insisted that he did not want to see a weak president in the future, because the party system was still too weak and poorly developed for a Western-style democracy. He did not appear to see the contradiction between a strong successor and his own position steering the Government from the back seat of the Zil.

Why has he made his intentions public now? Several things have pushed him into his announcement. The first is the distraction that the speculation is causing within Russia, and the intense jockeying for position among those in the inner circle who want to ensure their survival. Mr Putin can control this damaging plotting only if he makes it clear that he remains in full control until his final day in office – and, as he has now made plain, beyond.

Secondly, he has been pushed by the timetable of United Russia (UR), the main pro-Kremlin party in the Duma. Parliamentary elections are due on December 2 and the party has not yet announced who will head its list. A special party meeting will be held this month to make that decision. Mr Putin has spoken of his wish - real or convenient – to see political parties strengthened, instead of simply being vehicles to prop up the Kremlin’s nominees. But he cannot run as UR’s top candidate without first resigning as president, according to the law. So instead he may be adopted as an independent, though still topping the list. This device bends the constitution, though does not break it.

Finally, Mr Putin may have been forced to speak out now to stop those who want to keep him in power staging some kind of crisis or provocation to force a change in the constitution and keep him in office. That, he knows, would be a fatal blow to his image as a democrat and to any notion that he is anything but a traditional Russian strongman.

If he became prime minister, he would return Russia to the situation in 1999, when an ailing President Yeltsin appointed him to that office after trying out several others whom he thought he could groom as his successor. Mr Putin quickly consolidated his power on the back of the renewed fighting in Chechnya, and effectively took over the functions of the presidency.

Whether any candidate would now be willing to run for the weakened office of president is unclear. Sergei Ivanov, Mr Putin’s old KGB comrade, is still the favourite, and is known to be the choice of Kremlin insiders. He would have to forge a close understanding with Mr Putin if the two are to work together. He would, presumably, still have the presidential power to dismiss the Government and choose a new prime minister. But it would be a brave man who would risk throwing out a prime minister who has stacked the State with his loyalists.

Mr Putin is a shrewd manipulator of Russia’s Byzantine politics. He manages to play both the populist and the consummate Kremlin insider at the same time. This, together with the cascade of oil money now enriching most Russians, is what makes him popular. In his talk with Western correspondents, he spoke of the “moral influence” a leader can have in Russia, comparing himself indirectly with those dissidents whose political power came from their moral standing in society. He says he wants to play that role to embed democracy in Russia. But that, he admits, will take years. And can he do it, when the people clamour only for a strong tsar?

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