Profile: Dmitry Medvedev
Considered an economic liberal, Mr Medvedev served Mr Putin as first deputy prime minister, and he was also chairman of Russia's enormous state-run gas monopoly, Gazprom...

Mr Medvedev, 42, trained as a lawyer in Leningrad - now St Petersburg. The son of a professor, he became an assistant professor in his own right at St Petersburg State University in the 1990s.

While there, he became involved in the city council and joined Vladimir Putin's external affairs team as an expert consultant working for the mayor. It was a key period in Russia's transition from communism...

Mr Medvedev had been seen as one of several potential candidates to succeed Mr Putin. Unlike Vladimir Putin, he had no background in either the Soviet KGB or its successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB)...

In 2000, Mr Medvedev took charge of Vladimir Putin's presidential election campaign and in October 2003 he was appointed Kremlin chief of staff...

In an interview published a fortnight before the presidential election, Dmitry Medvedev told Russian news magazine Itogi that his ancestors included farm workers, a blacksmith and a hat maker.

He described growing up in a 40sq m (430sq ft) flat in Kupchino on the outskirts of St Petersburg, dreaming of buying jeans and Deep Purple and Pink Floyd records...