Medvedev blocks media crackdown

DMITRY ASTAKHOV/AFP/Getty Images

Does Dmitry Medvedev have a mind of his own after all?

Yesterday, Russia’s new president essentially sank a draft law that would have allowed the government to shut down a newspaper suspected of libel without even waiting for a court decision. A lawmaker from the ruling United Russia Party introduced the bill after a tabloid published rumors that Vladimir Putin was leaving his wife for a 24-year-old gymnast. Under Putin, the paper was shut down within days, but Medevedev has indicated that he may be a bit more liberal in his view of press freedom:

It is obvious that the … draft law could lead only to the creation of hindrances to the normal functioning of the media, and does not accomplish the declared aims — to defend citizens from the distribution of material that is libelous.”

Hopefully, this is an indication that it is still too early to dismiss Medvedev as Putin’s sock-puppet. Russia’s not going to magically transform into a liberal democracy any time soon, but there’s reason to suspect that Medvedev isn’t entirely on board with all of Putin’s authoritarian tendencies. He may be testing the waters to see how much he can get away with. Given that Putin has rigged the system so that he can impeach the president fairly easily, Medvedev doesn’t exactly have a lot of room to maneuver. But it’s still encouraging if he’s using what power he does have to curb some of the state’s most draconian excesses.