Zubkov to boost Russia's military
By Adrian Blomfield in Moscow
Last Updated: 7:33pm BST 14/09/2007
Russia's new prime minister has pledged to boost the country's military might amid growing signs that he could emerge as President Vladimir Putin's sucessor next spring.
Viktor Zubkov, an old friend of the president who served as a low-profile bureaucrat until his dramatic elevation this week, spoke after he was approved in his new position by Russia's rubber-stamp parliament.
Having become the first Kremlin heavyweight to declare an interest in contesting presidential elections next March, when Mr Putin is constitutionally obliged to step down, Mr Zubkov seemed to win the president's tangential support for his bid.
Mr Putin said on Friday that there were five people with a "real chance" of succeeding him - but only mentioned his little known but ultra-loyal prime minister by name.
The extraordinary hints surrounding Mr Zubkov's future have turned the former collective farm boss into a strong candidate for the succession.
Yet, given the president's proclivity for convoluted mind games, analysts warn that Mr Putin could be playing a double bluff in order to confuse Kremlin apparatchiks and avoid lame duck status.
Keen to demonstrate his allegiance to his boss, Mr Zubkov told deputies that he would dedicate his attentions to advancing Mr Putin's favourite projects: the restoration of Russia's military might and the resurgence of Russia's energy-fuelled economy.
"Our strategic goal is to help lift the defence industry complex," he said. "I believe it is proper to centre the government's efforts on the development of Russia's traditionally powerful shipbuilding and aircraft industries."
Since Mr Putin came to power in 2000, the Kremlin has poured increasingly large amounts of cash into Russia's rusting military in what appears to be a bid to regain the country's superpower status.
That presence is increasingly being felt in the West, with RAF jets again being forced to scramble on Friday after two Russian bombers probed British air space off the north coast of Scotland for the sixth time in two months.
On Saturday, however, Mr Putin will revel in a military display of a different sort as he takes the salute from British and Russian troops massed in Red Square to take part in Moscow's first ever military tattoo. The extravaganza, inspired and based on the Edinburgh tattoo, will be replete with historical symbolism.
Russia's Presidential regiment band and the Central Band of the Russian Army will be bedecked in imperial uniforms not worn since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
It is another sign of how Mr Putin, often seen as wedded to the country's Soviet past, has cherry-picked from both Tsarist and Communist era traditions in a bid to project Russia's might.
Since he came to power in 2000, he has controversially restored the music of the Soviet national anthem and revived the Soviet era red star as the Russian military's emblem.
But he has also resurrected the tsarist-era double headed eagle as the country's national crest in an indication of his fascination with Russia's imperial heritage.
And, despite underlying tensions with London, British forces will march through Red Square for the first time in history.
Sixteen regimental bands, including Scottish pipes and drummers and their counterparts from the Dominions and South Africa, will play a central role in proceedings.
German troops, shedding the uncomfortable memories of two failed invasions of Russia during the world wars, have marched through the centre of Moscow.
"I've seen the reverse of what one reads in the press," said Brigadier Melville Jameson, former chief executive of the Edinburgh Tattoo and an advisor to the event. "We've had nothing but support and friendship for everything we've done. Music crosses all boundaries."
The festival, known as Kremlin Zoria, has already drawn favourable comparisons with the Edinburgh tattoo since its first performance on Thursday.
Cossack dancers and Russian mounted guardsmen delighted a 7,000-strong audience in front of the famous domes of St Basil's cathedral before the Commonwealth pipes and drums emerged from the Kremlin's Spassky Gate in a shroud of dry ice.
The event culminated in a spectacular finale, with over 1,000 soldiers, accompanied by a choir, massed on the cobbles of the square to perform excerpts from Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture, Beethoven's Ode to Joy and the Coldstream Guards' famous arrangement of Amazing Grace.
The final salute, accompanied by a blaze of fireworks, was taken by Prince Michael of Kent.
"People in the West have this image of Red Square as full of rockets, tanks and lots of soldiers," said Vitaly Mironov, the chief producer of Kremlin Zoria. "We want to show that the Russian army is not just about fighting but also about playing music."
Mr Putin was reported on Friday to have refused to rule out a return to office after his successor steps down in 2012.
Asked at a meeting with academics in the city of Sochi, he said that he cared about Russia's stability and said its government needed to continue his policies. "He did not rule out he would try and return to the presidency," said one observer.
Zubkov to boost Russia's military
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