London ( CNN ) -- In the broader frame , Vladimir Putin 's decision to stand again as Russian president is no big surprise . Batman returns , though the idea of Robin ( Dmitri Medvedev ) becoming prime minister may not work out for long . Sure , the timing was unexpected . There were good reasons for making the decision later -- last time around Medvedev was revealed as Putin 's choice for president only after the parliamentary ( Duma ) elections in December 2007 . Medvedev now becomes an early lame duck -- the Kremlin has not dealt with that problem simply by saying he will be prime minister under Putin . By making the announcement before the Duma elections , Putin has guaranteed a majority for his new ' '' Popular Front '' -- but that will also create problems . Russian voters quickly cottoned on to the fact that the old United Russia party was just a roadblock : it could stop opponents winning elections , but had no role in government or in the generation of policy or strategic thinking . The corporatist behemoth Popular Front will be even worse . Russia has a `` managed democracy , '' but the campaign for the presidential elections next March will now be even longer , and in a long campaign not everything can be easily managed . Comment : Putin and Medvedev , trading places . There are other obvious downsides , even once the timing issue is out of the way . Western leaders who invested time and political capital in engaging Medvedev will be asking loudly what the interregnum was all about . The idea of a Kremlin-approved but reformist new liberal party has been squashed . So have the rumors that Russia 's liberal conscience and enforcer of fiscal discipline , Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin , would be the next prime minister . But Kudrin would have been a much better choice than an ineffective Medvedev , and could have taken Russia back to the long-forgotten era of real reform when Putin first came to power in the early 2000s -- before the Yukos affair in 2003 and the oil price explosion that sucked the life out of the reform impulse . What does Kudrin do now to stop the markets freaking out ? And how long will the mild-mannered Medvedev really last as PM , given that he is unlikely to transform himself overnight into a fire-breathing CEO ? The Russian government ca n't be run on Twitter . Then there are much bigger strategic questions . Will Putin 2.0 be any different from Putin 1.0 ? Can Putin dismantle Putinism ? Putin always hoped the history books would treat him well , which is why he chooses court historians to write them ; but even many of the supposed achievements of his first two terms of office ( 2000-08 ) , such as Russia 's much-vaunted `` stability , '' the restoration of state authority and victory in Chechnya , may now be under threat if Putin comes back in much more difficult economic circumstances and with real anarchy looming in Russia 's North Caucasian `` internal abroad . '' Even stagnation is not an easy option . Will Putin 2.0 be able to stop the growing torrent of capital flight out of Russia , which reached $ 21 billion in the first quarter of 2011 ? Putin 's ideologue Vladislav Surkov once coined the term `` offshore aristocracy ' '' to abuse the `` cosmopolitan '' oligarchs and Western advisers of the Yeltsin era ; but this is precisely what Putin 's oligarchy has become . The ruling elite is not investing at home -- many of them do n't even live in Russia . And capital flight is no longer just for oligarchs , as genuine entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises ( SMEs ) despair of red tape and corruption . Will Putin be able to curb the bloated state that has grown so unwieldy under oil money ? The budget only balances at an ever higher oil price -- currently reckoned to be about $ 125 a barrel . How high will the necessary price be in a few years ? Putin has so far failed to build a new narrative . The same old guys still sit beside him . Even his old image as the `` good tsar '' reigning in the `` bad boyars '' is suspect . Putin has not cleansed the stables , and the oligarchs close to him may get bolder and more brazen once he comes back to power . Putin 's favorite foreign policy initiatives will be pushed further forward , like the idea of a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan , with Ukraine under pressure to join . If Georgia 's President Mikheil Saakashvili `` does a Putin '' and makes himself prime minister after his second term runs out in January 2013 , Saakashvili and Putin could then be squaring off for years . The ugly youth group Nashi and its skinhead hinterland will still be around . Periodically , Putin 's PR machine has pushed out the idea that he is tired of office and looking forward to retirement . We can now put that myth to rest . He has now guaranteed himself another six or even 12 years of hyperactivity , with an overflowing in-tray .
Putin 's decision to stand again as Russian president is no big surprise , says commentator . Andrew Wilson says markets and investors are unlikely to be impressed by move . He asks : Can Putin stop capital flight out of Russia ; guarantee stability in Caucasus . And will Putin be able to curb bloated state that has grown unwieldy under oil money ?