MOSCOW – Russia’s Parliament overwhelmingly confirmed Vladimir V. Putin as prime minister on Thursday, completing a carefully managed departure from the presidency in a manner that left him the country’s dominant politician and with a clear grip on power.
Mr. Putin, out of office less than 26 hours, received 392 votes in the 450-seat Duma, Parliament’s lower house.
After a brief endorsement from his protégé and presidential successor, Dmitri A. Medvedev, Mr. Putin once again commanded the stage. He gave a 45-minute speech, proposing a series of domestic policy initiatives that seized many of Mr. Medvedev’s campaign themes and echoed his presidential addresses over the past eight years.
“Great and grandiose tasks lie before us,” Mr. Putin said, addressing a legislature firmly under his control as Mr. Medvedev sat silently.
The proposals included efforts to reduce Russia’s double-digit inflation, new legislation to create tax breaks for education, housing, and medical costs, and more government spending for housing, infrastructure and military equipment.
He also proposed tax reductions for the oil industry and said his government would work to revive agriculture and spur food production.
As much as 70 percent of the food in Russia’s major cities is imported, he said, suggesting that costs for food staples were especially vulnerable to inflation in a time of rising global transportation costs. “To lower prices, we must increase our production,” he said.
Mr. Putin suggested that he would move quickly, and that draft legislation for changes to the tax code — detailing what cuts and tax breaks will be made, and when — would be presented to legislators in August.
Mr. Medvedev was sworn in as Russia’s president on Wednesday inside the Grand Kremlin Palace in a ceremony mixing czarist splendor with renewed Russian confidence.
The ceremony marked the passing of formal power from Mr. Putin to his untested protégé.
But the events also served as a tribute to the enduring stature and popularity of Mr. Putin, whom Mr. Medvedev nominated as prime minister within hours of taking office.
Mr. Putin, a former intelligence service chief who had presided over Russia’s economic revival while consolidating power, rolling back civil liberties and leading a government plagued by corruption, arrived at the ceremony Wednesday alone and before Mr. Medvedev.
He stepped from a black limousine and briefly stood before the ceremonial Presidential Regiment, which was standing outside in the chill. “Greetings, comrades!” he said, and was met with a deep, rousing cheer.
In a departure from past inaugurations, the outgoing leader then addressed the more than 2,400 guests inside St. Andrew’s Hall before the new president took his oath. Mr. Putin said he had lived up to his promise, made eight years ago, to serve the country and its citizens faithfully.
The remarks appeared to presage Mr. Putin’s continued hand on Russian power.
“It is extremely important for everyone together to continue the course that has already been taken and has justified itself,” he said.
Only then did Mr. Medvedev, 42, approach the lectern, rest his hand on a copy of Russia’s Constitution and utter the oath of office.
In a brief address afterward, he touched themes he had embraced since Mr. Putin selected him as his successor late last year and shepherded him through a scripted election.
He emphasized improving living standards, education and medical care, and modernizing Russia’s narrow economy, which relies on oil and gas revenues, as well as other forms of natural resource extraction.
“I would like to assure all of the citizens of this country that I will be working to my fullest capacity,” he said. “I fully realize how much has yet to be done.”
Mr. Medvedev, whose public persona is decidedly softer than Mr. Putin’s, also stressed the importance of civil rights, as he has in several speeches since he became the president-elect.
Minutes later, Mr. Putin accompanied the new president outside to review the passing formations of the ceremonial regiment. When the two men left the dais after the last platoon passed, it was on cue from Mr. Putin, not Mr. Medvedev, who followed the former president’s lead.
The ceremony Wednesday was brief. But the leaders’ paired comments, and Mr. Putin’s physical dominance of each ceremonial stage, neatly framed the central questions about what the inauguration will mean for Russia’s politics and direction.
Will Mr. Putin remain the nation’s pre-eminent politician and policy setter? Or will Mr. Medvedev, whose career has been spent in his sponsor’s shadow, have the ability and latitude to choose the country’s course?
Mr. Medvedev has no known political history as a member of the nation’s security services, whose members climbed through the ranks of government and business under Mr. Putin to become a pervasive and dominant national force.
Mr. Putin, 55, managed to stay atop these often warring government clans, and to mediate their disputes and secure enough of their loyalty to create the impression of a stable, if not fully predictable, state. Whether Mr. Medvedev will be able to navigate the country’s bureaucratic and business disputes alone is not clear.
Mr. Medvedev has also presented himself in paradoxical ways.
He has often complimented the style and achievements of Mr. Putin, with whom he appears to have both a friendship and unwavering public support. But at times Mr. Medvedev has publicly championed the rule of law and the importance of human rights – both of which faced intense pressure during Mr. Putin’s two terms.
His critics have said that he is little more than Mr. Putin’s puppet, and that his pledges to liberalize the country and commit to human rights are undermined by the very means of his election, against a weak slate of pro-Kremlin candidates. The Russian government allowed no true opposition candidates to compete.
Mr. Putin leads United Russia, the country’s dominant political party. Mr. Medvedev’s remarks Wednesday and his first presidential decree – guaranteeing public housing by 2010 for surviving veterans of World War II – emphasized domestic affairs.
A difficult foreign policy portfolio awaited him, including a West wary of Russia after Mr. Putin’s assertive style and claims by Georgia, a Kremlin satellite in Soviet times that has turned toward the West in recent years, that Russia has been annexing the breakaway region of Abkhazia.
There was no immediate announcement about the composition of Mr. Medvedev’s government, or about how powers would be divided between the Russian leaders. The two men are scheduled to appear together on Friday at a military parade in Red Square.
Michael Schwirtz contributed reporting.
