MOSCOW (AP) — Dmitry Medvedev will become the third president of the Russian Federation tomorrow, in an elaborate modern ritual that should remind the world of his country’s czarist roots and 21st century wealth.
The 1993 constitution stipulates that the president takes the oath of office “in a ceremonial atmosphere,” and there is little risk Medvedev’s invitation-only inauguration on the grounds of the Kremlin will fail to do that.
Medvedev is to stride into an opulent throne room in the Grand Kremlin Palace around noon after an honor guard enters with a folded Russian tricolor and the presidential flag, according to Russian officials and state-run media.
Czar Alexander II’s coronation ceremony was held in the palace in 1856, the ITAR-Tass news agency said.
Outgoing President Vladimir Putin will give a short speech, and hand his former first deputy prime minister what is called the “presidential token,” a medal with a two-headed eagle and a cross on a neck chain. Medvedev will place his right hand on a red-bound copy of the Russian Constitution and the chairman of the Constitutional Court will administer the oath.
The new president is then expected to address the assembled dignitaries. After his speech, which overflow guests will watch on screens from the anterooms, cannons will fire a 30-gun salute.
Russia’s new commander-in-chief will review the Presidential Regiment beneath the onion domes of the cluster of churches in the Kremlin’s central square. Patriarch Alexy II, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, will also conduct a prayer service.
Medvedev’s inauguration will be followed Friday by a Victory Day parade celebrating the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, with tanks and missile launchers rolling across Red Square for the first time since the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse.
While the military parade will evoke memories of Soviet military glory, the inauguration ceremony will be more reminiscent of imperial Russia’s grandeur.
Putin was the first president to take the oath in the Grand Kremlin Palace, which has been restored since the Soviet collapse. His predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, and the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, were inaugurated elsewhere on the Kremlin grounds— in the boxy modern building where Soviet-era Communist Party congresses were held.
Medvedev’s ceremony, like previous ones, will not be open to the public.
Among the 2,000 invited guests are Gorbachev, Yeltsin’s widow, Naina, and a host of foreign ambassadors, as well as Russian lawmakers, religious leaders and prominent figures from the arts, business and other circles.
Ordinary Russians will, however, be able to watch the proceedings live on three state-run television channels. Cameras may monitor Medvedev as he rides through a Kremlin gate in a black car and walks to the palace’s Andreyevsky Hall along red carpets.
Amid preparations for the inauguration and military parade, central streets have been closed intermittently, compounding Moscow’s already notorious traffic troubles, thickening rush-hour subway crowds.
The ceremony will resemble Putin’s first inauguration, in 2000, but there is a profound difference beneath the pomp. Putin took over from the ailing and unpopular Yeltsin, who had handed Putin power months earlier.
Rather than retire, Putin is expected to remain a major political figure — perhaps the real ruler of Russia.
He will be confirmed as prime minister on Thursday, a post that will keep him in the limelight for the foreseeable future and could serve as a springboard to return to the presidency.
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