Eighteen months after he became President, Russians are still searching for evidence that Dmitri Medvedev is anything more than a seat-warmer for Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin in 2012.

Disappointed liberals, who had seen Mr Medvedev as a moderniser who could lead Russia away from Mr Putin’s autocratic “power vertical”, are placing their hopes in his second annual state-of-the-nation speech next month. Mr Medvedev has encouraged optimism by suggesting that he will use the speech to develop ideas that he set out in a lengthy recent essay entitled “Go Russia!”.

By any standards Mr Medvedev was refreshingly frank about the problems facing his country. He decried Russia’s “humiliating dependence” on raw materials and the “extremely low competitiveness” of its economy.

Democracy was fragile, alcoholism and poor healthcare were killing millions of citizens, and “centuries of corruption” had enfeebled civil society, leaving people passive and sullen.

While Russians had many admirable qualities, Mr Medvedev said that “bribery, theft, intellectual and spiritual laziness, and drunkenness . . . are vices that offend our traditions” and demanded renewed efforts to purge them from public life.

Most here easily accept this picture of their country. What encouraged liberals was Mr Medvedev’s prescription for curing Russia’s ills — the development of an “extremely open” and competitive political culture, backed by a judiciary determined to “cleanse the country of corruption” so that entrepreneurial talent could flourish.

The President had a chance to demonstrate his commitment to these principles this week but, as so often, he flunked the test. Opposition parties in the Duma, Russia’s parliament, had demanded a meeting with him after staging a rare walkout over the blatant rigging of regional elections that delivered almost 80 per cent of seats to Mr Putin’s ruling United Russia.

Mr Medvedev had already praised United Russia’s victory as conferring on the party the “moral and legal” authority to govern. He declared himself “open to dialogue” in the televised section of his meeting with the opposition leaders, but made clear when the cameras had left that the results would stand.

In his “Go, Russia!” address, Mr Medvedev wrote: “We really live in a unique time. We have a chance to build a new free, prosperous and strong Russia. As President I am obliged to do everything in my power to make sure that we fully take advantage of this opportunity.”

If only he would. What disappoints so many potential supporters is the yawning gap between Mr Medvedev’s rhetoric and his deeds. His inability to deliver, they say, demonstrates that power remains entirely in the hands of Mr Putin, the Prime Minister, and that Mr Medvedev will only ever be the junior partner in their so-called “tandem” of authority.

Can he say anything in his annual address to convince listeners that he is more than Mr Putin’s plaything, that he can walk the walk as President and not simply mouth the script? If he is not to be the lamest of lame-duck presidents for the last two years of his term, Mr Medvedev will have to demonstrate that he has his own political identity in 2010.

The odds remain strongly against it, despite President Obama’s efforts to portray Mr Medvedev as the preferred partner of the United States. Most Russians are already convinced that it will be “Go, Medvedev!” in 2012 as they wait passively for a Putin restoration.

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