information:filtering
2008–2012: Second premiership

Putin was barred from a third consecutive term by the Constitution. First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was elected his successor. In a power-switching operation on 8 May 2008, only a day after handing the presidency to Medvedev, Putin was appointed Prime Minister of Russia, maintaining his political dominance.

Putin has said that overcoming the consequences of the world economic crisis was one of the two main achievements of his second premiership. The other was stabilizing the size of Russia's population between 2008 and 2011 following a long period of demographic collapse that began in the 1990s.

The Russo-Georgian War that both started and finished in August 2008 was imagined by Putin and communicated to his staff as early 2006.

It was during this premiership that the 2009 Russia–Ukraine gas dispute occurred, and Putin controlled the Gazprom chessboard, according to Andriy Kobolyev, who was then an advisor to the CEO of the Ukrainian Naftogaz utility. Putin observed at a German trade show in 2010 that if his hosts did not want Russia's natural gas nor nuclear power they could always heat with wood, and for that they would need to log Siberia.

At the United Russia Congress in Moscow on 24 September 2011, Medvedev officially proposed that Putin stand for the presidency in 2012, an offer Putin accepted. Given United Russia's near-total dominance of Russian politics, many observers believed that Putin was assured of a third term. The move was expected to see Medvedev stand on the United Russia ticket in the parliamentary elections in December, with a goal of becoming prime minister at the end of his presidential term.

After the parliamentary elections on 4 December 2011, tens of thousands of Russians engaged in protests against alleged electoral fraud, the largest protests in Putin's time. Protesters criticized Putin and United Russia and demanded annulment of the election results. Those protests sparked the fear of a colour revolution in society. Putin allegedly organized a number of paramilitary groups loyal to himself and to the United Russia party in the period between 2005 and 2012.