"Putinites" plan Medvedev Street on Siberian farm
BARNAUL, Russia (Reuters) - A Siberian entrepreneur who named his farming community after Vladimir Putin plans to name a street in honor of the man likely to be Russia's next president.
Alexander Titov voted for 42-year-old Dmitry Medvedev in presidential elections on Sunday because he is the man most likely to continue the policies of Putin.
"Putin's presidential family has brought us many successes and a good harvest," Titov said at remote, snowbound Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin farm 4,000 km (2,500 miles) east of Moscow.
"It's important to us that he is continuing the policies of Putin. But we vote for a new president with a little sadness in our hearts," he told Reuters.
Putin must step down in May because of term limits. Polls predict Medvedev will win around 70 percent of the vote, largely because of Putin's backing.
In 2006, Titov named his farming community at the foot of the Altai mountains after Putin in gratitude to his initiative to reform agriculture. He took a $200,000 loan to revitalize a business that would otherwise have gone bankrupt.
Medvedev, a first deputy prime minister and Putin's chosen successor, has presided over the agricultural reforms.
About 200 residents of the village of Gornovka, where locals are nicknamed 'Putinites', have voted and Titov said his young farm laborers had all voted for Medvedev.
"We don't plan to change the name of the farm," he said. "The lads and I had a think and came up with an idea: to name a new street in the village after Dmitry Medvedev."
Not everyone in Gornovka, however, voted for Medvedev. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov won the support of pensioners in a village whose other farm, only several kilometers (miles) away, is named after Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
-- For more on Russia's presidential election, please see our blog "Operation Successor" at blogs.reuters.com/russia
