News that Vladimir Putin has been offered the leadership of Russia's biggest political party, United Russia, when he gives up the country's presidency and becomes prime minister on May 7th, underlines once more that he will remain a powerful figure after that. Although he has yet to say whether he will accept the offer, it seems unlikely it would have been made without that foreknowledge.
Opposition figures in Russia have criticised this development because they expect it will lead to a form of powersharing between the new president Dmitry Medvedev and the outgoing Mr Putin. In the past such dual-power arrangements have invariably been destabilising for Russia, they say, unless very clear lines of division are drawn. After his visit to the Nato summit in Bucharest last weekend and then at his meeting with President Bush in Sochi on the Black Sea Mr Putin said Mr Medvedev, not he, would as president in future represent Russia at international summits.
That is the least to be expected of the change. But it will be natural for leaders of other states to wonder just where power lies in Russia. Assuming Mr Putin accepts the offer to become United Russia's leader he would be better able to resist any move by Mr Medvedev to sack him if the two men fell out, since the parliament must approve any such decision - just as it can also impeach the president.
Mr Putin shows little sign of becoming a lame duck even though he is shortly to relinquish presidential power. At the weekend Nato failed to agree on inviting Ukraine and Georgia to become candidate members because its most powerful European members believe this would gratuitously upset Russia and possibly jeopardise its supply of oil and gas to the whole continent. Partly to offset this setback for Mr Bush they agreed in principle on US plans to build an anti-missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic. But Mr Putin maintained his opposition to such a system despite indicating he favours overall US-Russian co-operation on missiles. He says the plans could threaten Russia's security, upset the strategic nuclear balance in Europe and are not warranted by Iran's unproven status as a nuclear power.
All the indications are that these policy positions will remain in place under the new Russian leadership next month. They are widely shared elsewhere. This underlines the urgent need for progress to be made on a new agreement between the European Union and Russia to create a more effective framework for their co-operation.