President-elect Dmitry Medvedev says he is a lawyer "to my bones". Throughout a two-hour interview deep in the Kremlin, the 42-year-old successor to Vladimir Putin weighs every question, answering with precision and at length. But asked if Mr Putin was correct to say this month that the west will find it no easier to deal with Russia's next president, his response is terse.

"Of course he is right," he says with a slightly forced smile, sitting in a deep-green anteroom to a Kremlin hall hung with prints depicting the French retreat from Moscow in 1812.