MOSCOW: Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Monday defended Vladimir Putin's "moral" right to return for an historic third Kremlin term and denied having no real say under the Russian strongman.
Medvedev told a late-night television host in an hour-long interview that he understood protesters who came out on the streets of Moscow this winter following Putin's decision to switch jobs from prime minister back to president.
The former KGB spy scored a crushing election win in March and then appointed Medvedev as his premier under a highly controversial job swap agreement that could keep the old allies in power for at least six more years.
"From the legal standpoint and from the moral one as well -- something that may be even more important -- what we did was completely fair and legal," Medvedev said
He called the protests "absolutely normal" but also misguided.
"I can understand the emotional component (of the protests) but not the legal one because it is simply not there," he said in comments carried by news agencies that monitored the programme on its first airing in Russia's Far East.
Putin dominated politics when president in 2000-2008 and was largely credited with steering both Russia's domestic and foreign policies while Medvedev's prime minister for the four years he had to leave the Kremlin for constitutional reasons.
Medvedev was once described as playing "Robin to Putin's Batman" in a US diplomatic cable and had been forced to repeatedly deny having no real power while president.
His appointment as prime minister has been accompanied by a move by the government's most powerful aides from their old positions in the cabinet to Putin's administration in the Kremlin.
That shift along with the relative anonymity of Medvedev's new team has led to widespread speculation that Putin intends to make future economic and social decisions traditionally assigned to the government.
Such a shift in power would spell doom to Medvedev's repeatedly professed commitment to economic modernisation and a more liberal political approach.
But Medvedev scoffed at suggestions that he had been assigned the role of a technocrat who simply implemented decisions coming from the top.
"The prime minister signs dozens of government rulings, resolutions and instructions that touch the lives of millions of people," said Medvedev. "This cannot be a technical role in our country."
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