With yesterday’s election of Dmitry Medvedev as President of Russia the expectation is that he will be answering to Putin, who will become the country’s prime minister. This, however, may not be the case according to Bloomberg.

Barred from a third four-year term, Putin said in his last annual presidential press conference on Feb. 14 that the prime minister will have the “highest executive power.” He had arranged for Medvedev to promise him that job to retain his influence, and said he plans to keep it as long as his protege is in the Kremlin.

Four days later, Medvedev insisted he’ll have ultimate authority. “The president rules Russia, and according to the constitution, there’s only one president,” he said in an interview that his campaign paid Itogi magazine to publish and posted on his Web site.

“The conflict has already started,” said Alexei Mukhin, director of the Moscow-based Center for Political Information, an independent research group. While Putin allies still occupy key government posts, Mukhin predicted that Medvedev will be in a stronger position before long.

That’s because Russia has been governed by strong centralized authority for centuries. In czarist times, the monarch had absolute power. After 10-year-old Peter the Great and Ivan V both were given the title in 1682, Ivan’s sister Sophia ran things until Peter asserted himself in 1689. In the Soviet era, the Communist Party general secretary was supreme.

Under Russia’s current constitution, the president controls both domestic and foreign policy and presents his nominee for prime minister to parliament for approval. The president has the power to dismiss that premier at any time.