President Medvedev will need to juggle his formal constitutional requirements with those based on shadow politics and factions, believes Richard Sakwa, head of Politics and International Relations at Kent University.

Thursday's Duma speech by Vladimir Putin showed no signs of any forthcoming political changes in the Russian policy, believes Aleksey Kuzmin, political analyst and Chairman of the Expert Council of the National Prospects Foundation.

President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin plan to lead Russia together. But how effective will the duo be in practice? Andrey Zagorsky from Moscow State University of International Relations joined RT.

Putin’s economic priorities are to fight inflation, cut taxes on energy extraction and improve financial markets. Chris Weafer, Chief Strategist at Uralsib, joined RT to to comment on the new PM’s programme.

Former president Putin has been approved as Russia’s new Prime Minister. Boris Kagarlitsky, Director from the Institute for Globalization Studies, spoke to RT about Putin's likely plans.

President Medvedev has signed a decree, appointing Putin to the premiership. Dmitry Evfstafyev from the National Laboratory of Foreign Policy explained his ideas about the shape of a future cabinet.

“Probably Prime Minister Putin will take his people from the President’s administration to the Government,” Dmitry Babic from the Russia Profile Magazine believes.

State Duma Deputies backed Putin’s candidacy for Prime Minister. Aleksandr Nagorny, deputy Editor-in-Chief from newspaper Zavtra, joined RT to comment on the former president’s views on the future.

Vladimir Putin is expected to be approved as Russia’s new Prime Minister. “The problem when forming the Cabinet will be making it fit the ambitious task that was set in the strategy for 2020,” says United Russia's Dmitry Polikanov.

The eventual make-up of the new government is part of the agreement between Putin and Medvedev, says Andrey Zolotov from Russia Profile magazine. He believes the government’s general outline will remain pretty much the same.

Bureaucratic rivalry between the offices of the new president and prime minister is possible. That’s according to Andrey Kortunov, the president of the Moscow-based New Eurasia Foundation. But he believes that Putin, as PM, will try to resist temptation to interfere in areas he is not responsible for under the constitution.

The relationship between Russia and the U.S. shouldn’t be ‘just about slogans’. "It should address the shared and conflicting interests that America has with Russia", Mark Brzezinski, former U.S. Security Council member told RT.