Mr Putin's place will be taken by Russia's prime minister, Mikhail Kasyanov.
It started in October, when President Dmitry Medvedev said he would not seek re-election and that in his place would be Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, and already a two-time president.
These are more notional than real, as the farcical second show trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oil boss and a Putin rival, which is taking place on Mr Medvedev's watch, demonstrates.
As it turned out, General Alexander Lebed was looking thoroughly out of place in President Vladimir Putin's Russia when he died this week in a helicopter crash in his Siberian fief of Krasnoyarsk.
All the politics takes place in the brain of Vladimir Putin, and he is a trained KGB man, and so he's pretty good at keeping his own counsel.
Meanwhile Mr Blair will attend the TUC and Labour party conferences, both taking place in Blackpool, and visit President Putin as part of the campaign of persuasion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin now says Moscow would back a UN resolution to place an international troop presence in Iraq, even under American military command.
Or, despairing of the prospects of the outgoing prime minister, Sergei Stepashin, successfully carrying the democratic torch in an election, he could simply be putting in place an alternative, in the person of Vladimir Putin.
As President Obama is fond of saying, let me be clear: Vladimir Putin's Russia - yes, he still runs the place - is cynically exploiting the U.S. administration's fecklessness in blindly pursuing improved relations.
Attracting 8% of the vote in a third-place finish, Prokhorov went mute for a while after Putin returned to power.
FORBES: Russian Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov: From Oligarch To President?
Putting Putin in a position of even greater resource power can only lead one place: to high oil prices and an amazing bull market in energy.
He used to be Mr Putin's boss in St Petersburg, but early signs that he might find a place in the president's team proved misleading.
Only the Duma, Russia's parliament, can reject the treaty with authority, and only the two men's boss, President Vladimir Putin, can decide when and whether to submit it to the Duma for approval in the first place.
His service in the KGB during the American-led effort to place intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe nearly a quarter century ago clearly left its mark on Putin.
"Orthodoxy, which occupies a special place in Russian history, continues to play a paramount role in preserving the moral pillars, " Mr Putin said.
应用推荐