Medvedev inauguration ceremony starts in Kremlin

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

MOSCOW (AFP) — Dmitry Medvedev was being sworn in Wednesday as Russian president under the shadow of his powerful mentor Vladimir Putin and growing challenges to the country's oil boom from corruption and inflation.

The inauguration of Russia's third president since the Soviet collapse was set to take place at midday (0800 GMT) in the golden Andreyevsky hall of the Kremlin palace.

Police closed off central Moscow, prompting huge traffic jams, in readiness for the pomp-filled one-hour ceremony.

Medvedev, 42, inherits a booming economy fuelled by massive oil and gas exports, and a country at its most confident on the international stage since the 1991 Soviet collapse.

The inauguration marks the peak of his rise from obscurity as a Putin-era bureaucrat...