page_title: Political career of Vladimir Putin
section_title: Second Premiership (2008–2012)
hierarchical_section_title: Political career of Vladimir Putin / Second Premiership (2008–2012)
caption_attribution_description: English: THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW. With President-Elect Dmitry Medvedev at the Meeting with State Duma Leadership and Faction leaders.Русский: МОСКВА, КРЕМЛЬ. С избранным Президентом России Дмитрием Медведевым – на встрече с руководством Государственной Думы и лидерами фракций.
context_page_description: The political career of Vladimir Putin concerns the career of Vladimir Putin in politics, including his current tenure as President of Russia.
context_section_description: Putin was barred from a third term by the Constitution. First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was elected his successor. On 8 May 2008, only a day after handing the presidency to Medvedev, Putin was appointed Prime Minister of Russia, maintaining his political dominance.
  The Great Recession hit the Russian economy especially hard, interrupting the flow of cheap Western credit and investments. This coincided with tension in relationships with the EU and the U.S. following the 2008 South Ossetia war, in which Russia defeated the U.S. and NATO ally Georgia.
  However, the large financial reserves, accumulated in the Stabilization Fund of Russia in the previous period of high oil prices, alongside the strong management helped the country to cope with the crisis and resume economic growth since mid-2009. The Russian government's anti-crisis measures have been praised by the World Bank, which said in its Russia Economic Report from November 2008: "prudent fiscal management and substantial financial reserves have protected Russia from deeper consequences of this external shock. The government's policy response so far—swift, comprehensive, and coordinated—has helped limit the impact." Putin himself named the overcoming of consequences of the world economic crisis one of the two main achievements of his 2nd Premiership (the other named achievement being the stabilisation of the size of Russia's population between 2008-2011 following the long period of demographic collapse started in the 1990s).
  At the United Russia Congress in Moscow on 24 September 2011, Medvedev officially proposed that Putin stand for the Presidency in 2012; an offer which Putin accepted. Given United Russia's near-total dominance of Russian politics, many observers believed that Putin was all but assured of a third term. The move was expected to see Medvedev stand on the United Russia ticket in the parliamentary elections in December, with a goal of becoming Prime Minister at the end of his presidential term.  During the 2012 presidential campaign, Putin published 7 articles to present his vision for the future.
  After the parliamentary elections on 4 December 2011, tens of thousands Russians engaged in protests against alleged electoral fraud, the largest protests in Putin's time; protesters criticized Putin and United Russia and demanded annulment of the election results. However, those protests, organized by the leaders of the Russian non-systemic opposition, sparked the fear of a colour revolution in society, and a number of "anti-Orange" counter-protests (the name alludes to the Orange Revolution in Ukraine) and rallies of Putin supporters were carried out, surpassing in scale the opposition protests.
caption: Vladimir Putin with Dmitry Medvedev
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