Talk at the Balalaika restaurant in Tokyo's Kanda district these evenings, as at the 27 other restaurants specializing in Russian cuisine in the Japanese capital, is focused on Vladimir Putin.
In any democracy, which Russia has been tentatively since 1991, the first duty of the president is to get elected. Putin, 48, who has been prime minister and is now acting president, seems to have satisfied the most important requirement for victory in the March 26 Russian presidential election. He is the handpicked successor of former President Boris Yeltsin, the favorite of the Yeltsin coterie known as "the Family," and the darling of an increasingly active -- some even say independent -- press.
So Putin's election seems assured. Then what? Does the former KGB officer have a Japan policy? Will he show the same enthusiasm for solving the Northern Islands issue and signing a peace treaty with Japan that Yeltsin displayed, albeit perhaps superficially?
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