MOSCOW - Dmitry Medvedev moves into the Kremlin next week and his mentor Vladimir Putin takes charge as prime minister as Russia plunges into three days of pomp climaxing with a Soviet-style Red Square military parade.
The three days of carefully-orchestrated events starting with Medvedev's inauguration on Wednesday will conclude a political drama played over years centering on Russia's resurgence and Putin's choice of successor.
The inaugural ceremony was due to be followed Thursday by appointment of Putin as prime minister with a spectacular World War II victory parade on Friday.
The script was written for next week's events as far back as last autumn, when Putin said he would lead the ruling United Russia party into legislative elections and unveiled a plan to become prime minister if the party won big.
From that moment on, everything unfolded like clockwork: United Russia won a landslide, the hugely-popular Putin endorsed a successor and that chosen one -- Medvedev -- said he would make Putin his first prime minister if elected.
Elected he was, by the forecast landslide, on March 2, to become Russia's third president after Boris Yeltsin and Putin and setting the stage for a new chapter in Russia -- a chapter Putin clearly intends to author.
So Wednesday, the 42-year-old Medvedev, a one-time law professor from Saint Petersburg who was catapulted by Putin virtually overnight to the heights of state power eight years ago, takes the oath of the highest office in the land.
The question, though, is how long it really will be the highest.
Ex-KGB officer Putin, who at 55 remains youthful and by far Russia's most popular leader, earlier this year described the presidency as a "symbol" and has made clear that he intends to exercise practical power as prime minister.
Medvedev, by contrast, has no political support base of his own and is, for now at least, entirely beholden to Putin and Putin's backers in many sectors of Russian society for his own political existence.
Medvedev's only discernible platform during his presidential campaign was support for his mentor's policies -- a collection of Putin speeches known collectively as the "Putin Plan" -- and he has shown no inclination to change them.
His Kremlin inauguration ceremony will be a sober affair replete with all the trappings befitting a high occasion of state, a ceremonial occasion and tightly-scripted media event staged to buttress Russia's new national pride.
But according to a scenario spelled out by the speaker of parliament last month, Medvedev's first act after being sworn in as president will be to nominate Putin as his first head of government.
"On May 7 this will be proposed to the Duma. And on May 8 we will adopt it," Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov said.
In addition to putting a lock on the prime minister's job, Putin also last month said he would become leader of the United Russia party, which now holds a constitutional majority in parliament following the December elections.
So as the Putin presidency comes to an end and the Medvedev era begins, much of the practical political power in Russia remains in the hands of the former, though the symbolic -- constitutional -- authority lies with the latter.
It is after these events scheduled to unfold on May 7 and May 8 that the spectacle of a massive military parade through Red Square, the likes of which have not been seen since Soviet times, takes place May 9.
Armoured personnel carriers, battle tanks, mobile long-range nuclear missiles and Russia's most advanced military aircraft are scheduled to be on display for the annual World War II Victory Day holiday parade.
"We must show the world that we are ready to respond to any aggression," Igor Kirilov, a Soviet-era Red Square parade television commentator, said of this year's planned display.
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