James Hill for The New York Times

Dmitri A. Medvedev was elected as post-Soviet Russia’s third president on March 2, 2008, a victory all but assured months earlier when Vladimir V. Putin, the incumbent, officially endorsed him. With the blessing of his long-time patron and the backing of Kremlin political and financial resources, Mr. Medvedev coasted through a nearly unnoticeable campaign amid fawning media coverage and a muzzled opposition.

Yet, given Mr. Putin's current political dominance, it is unclear whether Mr. Medvedev’s victory was little more than a legal formality meant to ensure his predecessor’s continued hold on power. Mr. Putin is set to become prime minister in May shortly after Mr. Medvedev’s inauguration.

Mr. Medvedev, born in 1965, is a lawyer and former law professor who worked in politics and business in St. Petersburg after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which brought him into close contact with Mr. Putin and the other reformers in that city's government. He followed Mr. Putin to Moscow in 1999 and, despite his relative youth, has risen in influence and prominence. In 2000, Mr. Medvedev became chairman of Gazprom, the energy giant, which has increasingly become a wealthy corporation and instrument of Kremlin foreign and domestic policy.

He managed the Putin re-election campaign in 2004 and served as the president's chief of staff until 2005, when Mr. Putin elevated him to a new position: first deputy prime minister. Mr. Putin also assigned Mr. Medvedev to oversee a campaign to spend the country's swelling gas and oil revenues on projects to improve health care, housing and agriculture. Unlike Mr. Putin and many top officials in the Kremlin, Mr. Medvedev appears to have no background in the K.G.B., or its successor, the F.S.B., or other security agencies.

He has a reputation as a technocrat with a strong grasp of economics, and is given to making scholarly allusions to Latin legal terms. Mr. Putin put him in charge of spending some of the country’s large budget surplus, amassed because of the high price of oil, on improvements to housing, health care, education and other social services.

Mr. Medvedev had long been one of the most likely choices to succeed Mr. Putin, along with another first deputy prime minister, Sergei B. Ivanov, who is considered more hawkish and is a veteran of the F.S.B.

The decision by Mr. Putin to endorse Mr. Medvedev over Mr. Ivanov or other candidates from the security services stirred speculation in political circles that Mr. Putin had decided on a successor who could be more easily controlled from behind the scenes.

Still, while Mr. Medvedev is considered a moderate who may have a more pro-Western bent, little is actually known about how he will govern as president. He has never run for any office and despite the publicity during the last year about his ambitions, had never publicly declared an interest in the office, clearly in deference to Mr. Putin. While Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Putin have different backgrounds, they are similar in one respect: both were plucked from relative obscurity and put in positions of power even though they had never before been involved in electoral politics. Mr. Putin was installed as prime minister by President Boris N. Yeltsin after serving in the F.S.B. -- April 17, 2008

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