Video:The BBC's Andrew Marr interviews the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ahead of the G20 summit in London-29/3/09

Only one in eight Russians may believe he is in charge but President Dmitry Medvedev presides over a nuclear arsenal and one of the biggest reserves of natural fuel in the world, and he is increasingly media-savvy as the BBC's Andrew Marr found out.

The crunch of snow underfoot, a brisk cold wind blowing through the birch forests and, at last, a single black official car sweeping up the drive.

President Dmitry Medvedev is reckoned by most Russians polled to be much less important than his mentor Vladimir Putin - the former president and currently prime minister.

But when he arrives, he feels important - the leather-jacketed security men snapping into activity. At this official dacha outside Moscow, the mood is suddenly urgent.

It is a curious situation. I am greeting him at his own official residence, a gothic Germanic castle dating from the 1880s.


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Once, the Czar came here.

Now it is in the middle of an area colonised by super-rich Russians - the road junction has a "Luxury Village" sign and adverts on the road here are all for Rolex, Gucci and condos in the US.

But here, Barvikha, is where President Medvedev receives foreign visitors. He has not done extended interviews like this before - we are very privileged.

He bounds out, smiling, and thrusts a buff coloured folder at me. My FSB file?

No - phew! - just the Wikipedia file on another Marr, this one a philologist from the Stalin era, who tried to apply the principles of class struggle to the development of language..........Continue at BBC