The suspense, to the extend that there was any, is over.  Medvedev has presented a list of candidates for the next Russian government and Putin has approved it, and the result is, frankly, rather unimpressive.
First, for all the talk of a “new team”, this is a team of hyper-continuity.  The only big change was the replacement of Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliev by Vladimir Kolokoltsev.  The good news is that both Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin have both kept their jobs.  The bad news is that Rogozin was not given the Defense Ministry.  Worse, Anatoly Serdyukov also retained has post as Defense Minister, which is a slap in the face of the Russian armed forces where he is unanimously hated.  Finally, with Serdyukov firmly in place, the hapless Chief of General Staff General Nikolai Makarov is likely to also remain in place.  Considering that this spineless lackey of Serdyukov has recently declared that there was a nuclear threat of Iran this is not reassuring at all (he also added ““We are aware that many countries that have never admitted having a nuclear arsenal, actually have one” – nobody know what the wtf he was talking about….)

Bottom line: not a disastrous government, but definitely a very disappointing and most uninspiring one.

And that worries me as such a boring and “grey” government is most likely the result of a lack of vision, if not a stagnation in political thought and will.

As so often, I hope that I am wrong.

The Saker