MOSCOW, Sept 12: Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed his prime minister and government on Wednesday, paving the way for the Kremlin leader to handpick a successor when he steps down next year.

The replacement of Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov with a barely known finance official, Viktor Zubkov, came three months before parliamentary elections and less than six months ahead of a presidential poll to replace Putin.

The lower house of parliament is expected on Friday to rubber stamp the nomination of Zubkov, head of the government’s financial crimes investigation agency and a former Soviet state farm manager.

Analysts saw 65-year-old Zubkov’s sudden rise as the launch of a long-awaited plan to arrange a replacement for Putin when he steps down at the end of a second term in 2008.

Putin hinted at this, saying he wanted to prepare “the country for the period after the presidential election.” But just who will step into his shoes remains one of the biggest mysteries of global politics.

Not one political heavyweight has thrown his hat in the ring for the March 2, 2008 election, leaving the world guessing who will head the energy producing giant and nuclear-weapons superpower — a process that can resemble Soviet-era “Kremlinology.” News that Fradkov was stepping down sent the rumour mill into overdrive.After all, Putin himself rose to power from obscurity after first being named prime minister in 1999, then taking over the presidency from Boris Yeltsin in a barely contested election in 2000.

The Vedomosti daily fuelled speculation with a report on Wednesday that Sergei Ivanov, the first deputy prime minister in Fradkov’s government, was about to become prime minister.Ex-KGB general Ivanov, 54, has never said he will run for president but is widely considered a favourite along with the other first deputy premier, the bureaucrat Dmitry Medvedev.

Both men are shown almost daily on state-run television making them among the country’s best known politicians — despite never having held elected office.

Independent analyst Yuliya Latynina said the choice of the barely known Zubkov meant Putin did not yet want to make his choice public. “This is not a solution but the putting off of a solution until a later time,” she said.

Others go further, saying that Putin is keeping his options open possibly in order to hold on to power himself.

The constitution limits presidents to two consecutive terms, but would allow a third term at a later date — either at the next scheduled presidential election in 2012 or in much earlier snap polls.

Kremlin-connected analyst Vladimir Nikonov saw the appointment of Zubkov as “creating a system of power for the temporary period in which, I believe, Putin will not be president.” “Putin will be able to return to this post because he will step down with such huge popularity ratings,” Nikonov told Interfax news agency.

The Communist Party leader, Gennady Zyuganov, said Putin was bogged down in the increasingly Byzantine political debate: “It’s obvious that Mr Putin simply couldn’t resolve the successor problem.” Kremlinology — which in Soviet times meant scrutinising the line-up of leaders at Red Square parades for clues to politburo policy — has always been a hazardous business.

Moscow Carnegie Centre analyst Masha Lipman said she also thought Putin was considering a long-term return to power.

But she warned against drawing early conclusions.

“We are involved in deciphering signals from above. It’s total opaqueness in decision-making. It signifies the separation of the state from society,” she said.—AFP