Security and Co-operation in Europe reported that the elections were generally organized professionally, there was criticism of unequal treatment of candidates by State-controlled media among other issues. After the election, on 24 February 2004, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and his cabinet were dismissed by Putin. Pundits in Russia believed this not to be due to the president's displeasure with the government, but with Kasyanov himself, as the Russian constitution does not allow the prime minister to be removed without firing the whole cabinet. Kasyanov later went on to become a stark Putin critic. Although Russia's regions enjoy a degree of autonomous self-government, the election of regional governors was substituted by direct appointment by the president in 2005. In September 2007, Putin accepted the resignation of Prime minister Mikhail Fradkov, appointing Viktor Zubkov as the new Prime minister. In the 2008 Russian Presidential election, Dmitry Medvedev—whose nomination was supported by the popular outgoing President Vladimir Putin—scored a landslide victory. According to analysts, the country was now effectively ruled by a "tandem", with a constitutionally powerful President and an influential and popular Prime Minister. Russia has suffered democratic backsliding during Putin's and Medvedev's tenures. Freedom House has listed Russia as being "not free" since 2005. In 2004, Freedom House warned that Russia's "retreat from freedom marks a low point not registered since 1989, when the country was part of the Soviet Union." Alvaro Gil-Robles (then head of the Council of Europe human rights division) stated in 2004 that "the fledgling Russian democracy is still, of course, far from perfect, but its existence and its successes cannot be denied." The Economist Intelligence Unit has rated Russia as "authoritarian" since 2011, whereas it had previously been considered a "hybrid regime" (with "some form of democratic government" in place) as late as 2007. The Russian Federation states that Russia is a democratic federal law-bound state with a republican form of government, which has been proven of not being acted upon today. Political scientist Larry Diamond, writing in 2015, stated "no serious scholar would consider Russia today a democracy". Natalia Arno, former head of the International Republican Institute's operations in Russia, describes elections in Russia's "managed democracy" thusly, Political actors who support the president are permitted to put their name on the ballot and to nominally run against him, but whenever a person arose who actually wanted to challenge the system, they always ran into bureaucratic