London Observer (Feb 29): The man who wasn't there (Putin)

Form the London Observer (Sunday supplement of the Guardian Unlimited
Dated Sunday February 29

The man who wasn't there
The election in two weeks will confirm Vladimir Putin as the most powerful Russian leader since Stalin. Yet five years ago he was just another faceless KGB apparatchik... Nick Paton Walsh traces the remarkable rise of a president without a past
By Nick Paton Walsh

In the end, the fate of Leningrad - and perhaps even Russia - came down to a single telephone call. It was August 1991 and the people had taken to the streets to protest against an attempt by hardliners to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachov and put an end to the sweeping changes being brought about by his perestroika. The exchange between Anatoli Sobchak, council head of the Leningrad Soviet, and the local KGB chief, General Kurkov, was brief and formal, yet by the end of it, the two men had cut a deal that would keep blood off the streets of Leningrad and stop the city from falling back into the authoritarian abyss that had characterised it for the past 74 years.
The deal was uncomplicated. Leningrad avoided bloodshed at a cost - the KGB was given assurance that its future was secure in what was to come.
The phone call was arranged by a young aide in Sobchak's staff who was also, conveniently, still a KGB officer at the time. The Observer has learnt that the aide was Vladimir Putin.
The Russian leader's role in Leningrad's 1991 crisis set the political tone for his life and defined the subtle methods behind his ascent to the presidency. Putin: the backroom fixer and negotiator. It was he who orchestrated a deal between the old and the new, in which democracy would appear to come to Russia, yet leave the KGB - the essence and muscle of the Soviet machine - unharmed.
His personal account of his life elliptically says that he was 'on leave' during most of the 1991 crisis, so the incident itself has become a metaphor for Putin's past. Officially, it never happened. He was not there.
When Vladimir Putin inevitably wins the forthcoming presidential elections on 14 March, he will become perhaps the most powerful Russian leader since Stalin.

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Unlike in a parliamentary democracy, the prime minister in Russia does not lead the country. He is responsible for shaping economic policy and for coordinating the work of other ministries, although the defense and interior ministers answer directly to the president.

checks and balances seem a bit missing?