The planned elections for March 14th have still not taken place yet Mr Putin has already taken energetic, anticonstitutional steps to shift power into his hands.

The issued edict on March 9th “About the system and structure of federal bodies of supreme power” breaks down the organisations of power into those that the president manages and those that the government manages. It’s not difficult to guess which ministries and departments the president has decided to take control of. However, let’s go through them: Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Justice, Foreign Intelligence services, Federal Security Services, Federal Immigration Service, Federal Drug Prevention Service and another 10 less significant federal services and agencies. All in all, in the president’s favour there are 20 federal institutions of power. The state remains in control of 51 institutions.

Meanwhile, in not one of the fourteen articles of the Constitution that define the work of the president of Russia does it even mention that the president can manage the ministries and federal services. This is within the remit of the government. In reality, if he permitted to manage anything, it is only foreign policy but, again, policy and not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Therefore, Putin has not stopped at just general management of the ministries. He has assigned himself the right to appoint and dismiss ministers and even their successors from duty, whereas the Constitution grants him the right to appoint only the chairman of the government with the consent of the State Duma. He can only appoint and dismiss federal ministers from duty upon invitation from the chairman of the government.

Thus, a constitutional revolution is imminent completely on the pretext of reform of the organs of supreme power. For some reason the Russian media and political analysts have allowed this event to pass by unnoticed. They animatedly discuss skilful re-arrangements and the amount of abolished and recreated ministries, federal works and agencies. However the ministry staff, unfortunately, do not have as great a significance as these, especially in view of how the government is being reformed and by whom.

Actually, the Kremlin has been answering questions that the government should be for a long time, but formally this has remained within the framework of the Constitution. On March 9th Putin took a step towards legislative security of the regime of his own power. It is possible that Mikhail Kasyanov was an obstacle on this path. With the new prime minister these complications are not expected.

Russia is slowly but surely moving towards a presidential dictatorship. Putin’s decree from March 9th is a visible testament to that.