MOSCOW — Russia’s democracy is weak, its economy is ailing and the country faces long-term problems with the health of its population, President Dmitry Medvedev said in an article published Friday.
Medvedev criticized an economy that feeds solely off Russia’s energy resources, a lack of competitive politics and excessive state influence in everyday life — all in an article that some observers said was an attempt to distance him from his mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
“An ineffective economy, a semi-Soviet social sphere, a weak democracy, negative demographic trends and an unstable Caucasus. These are very big problems even for a state like Russia,” Medvedev wrote in the piece, which ran in several leading newspapers and on the Kremlin website
