KEY POINTS:
He walks like Putin, talks like Putin and buys the same suits as Putin.
Dmitry Medvedev has undergone an image transplant in advance of the vote overnight in the Russian presidential election.
Kremlin spin doctors, desperate to engineer a huge win for the former lawyer, have pulled out
all the stops to transform him into a carbon copy of outgoing Vladimir Putin.
"Their main aim has been to turn him from this soft, cuddly figure into Putin's tough little brother," said Mark Urnov, a former adviser to President Boris Yeltsin and dean of political science at Moscow's Higher School of Economics. It has not been an easy task. At 1.58m, Medvedev is the same height as Napoleon, leading Russian bloggers to dub him the "nano-President". Putin is also short, but has a chest rippling with muscles, shown off in recent pictures of him on a Siberian fishing trip.
A journalist in Ekaterinburg told how officials granting accreditation for a visit by Medvedev, 42, urged photographers to shoot from a low angle so that the future President did not look too small. Spin doctors have advised him to take a step forward when he is being photographed in a group.
Kremlin PR gurus are working hard to persuade the electorate he is an action hero like Putin, 55, who loves judo and riding.
"Putin has been extremely popular and the continuity in image is an attempt to persuade the electorate there will be continuity in politics too," said Urnov.
The makeover required real effort. Two years ago the former lawyer, now First Deputy Prime Minister, resembled an ordinary, overfed bureaucrat. In recent weeks he has started using sharper language, mimicking Putin's intonation, acquired a cooler haircut and lost weight.
"In different circumstances I would probably have just been idle, but with this routine I was obliged to actively take part in sport," he admitted in a recent interview.
"Looking at him and Putin you could think they have exactly the same person taking care of their suits," said designer Lidiya Soseliya. "The younger man has deliberately adopted the dark Hugo Boss suits and tight black sweaters favoured by his mentor," she said.
VOTING OVER 11 TIME ZONES
* More than 109 million Russians across 11 time zones were able to vote for any one of four candidates.
* First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is expected to win an overwhelming victory.
* Communist Gennady Zyuganov, ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and little-known politician Andrei Bogdanov are also running.
* About 96,000 polling stations were open.
* A complete official count may not be available until today.
* Turnout in the last presidential election, in 2004, was 64 per cent.
- OBSERVER