Well, I'm not sure what to call what happened in Russia yesterday.

In a nutshell, President Vladimir Putin announced he was running for the December parliamentary elections and hinted that he could be prime minister after his term as president expires next year. The announcement was made at a convention of the pro-Putin United Russia party and, according to this report in The New York Times, it was a masterpiece of political stagecraft, complete with several well-chosen speakers imploring him to stay.

And those entreaties have a certain degree of authenticity. Putin is very popular among many Russians. And Western governments and markets seemed to breathe a sigh of relief today, perhaps figuring that a Russian leader that they know is better than one they don't, like the new Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov. Opposition parties in Russia were, of course, beside themselves even though they had long expected some dramatic move from Putin to stay in power.

Can Putin do it? Can he be president and a legislator at the same time? Apparently yes. Though Russia's Constitution, like ours, is based on a separation of powers, it does not ban the president from running for other offices.

That was what he did, but what does it mean?

Russia's RIA-Novosti news agency first compared the move to a dramatic game of chess, but ended its opinion piece wondering whether the game at hand wasn't short-sighted bingo instead.

For Radio Free Europe, yesterday's announcement was the clearest signal yet that Putin plans to continue to pull the strings in Russia for a long time to come. One Russian political scientist it quoted went so far as to suggest that once Putin is named prime minister, the laws in Russia will be changed so that the most important ministries, like Defense and Internal Affairs, will report to the prime minister and not the president.

The Associated Press imagined the following scenario: The new president would remain in office for a certain period of time after next March's elections and then his prime minister--guess who--would take over.

For The Moscow Times, Putin's moves were not a ringing endorsement of democracy. United Russia, it noted, is bending party rules to let Putin lead its ticket without actually joining the party.

You can read more of the major media's assessments here. Or check out the opinions in the blogosphere. I'm just going to pronounce myself profoundly perplexed.

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