Luzhkov's future

The lead story in Monday's Moscow Times was about Mayor Luzhkov's plans to enter the fray in the upcoming City Duma elections:

Luzhkov Will Run for City Duma
Oksana Yablokova, Monday, August 15, 2005. Issue 3230. Page 1.

Adding fuel to what is shaping up to be a fiery election campaign for the Moscow City Duma, Mayor Yury Luzhkov said on Friday that he would run for a seat as the top candidate for the United Russia party.

I thought they "buried the lede" - American journalese for hiding a key element of the story toward the end of an article - when I saw this paragraph deep in the article, after the jump onto an inside page:

Luzhkov's candidacy does not necessarily mean that he will became a city legislator. Luzhkov and other prominent regional leaders ran for the State Duma in 1999 and 2003 elections with no intention of becoming deputies. They topped United Russia's party list in what was a clear attempt to garner more votes for the party.

But on Tuesday I heard more speculation that Luzhkov might actually want to become speaker of the Moscow City Duma (on the radio), or that this might be a result that's desirable to the Kremlin ("Moscow will ring in 2006 with a battle for power," Nezavisimaya Gazeta). Monday's MT article raised the first possibility but seemed to reject it:

Andrei Ryabov, a political analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said Luzhkov might actually be interested in quitting two years before his term ended to become speaker of the City Duma. He said the Kremlin appeared to be chipping away at Luzhkov's hold on Moscow, noting that President Vladimir Putin made Valery Shantsev, Luzhkov's longtime deputy and a possible candidate to succeed him in 2007, the new governor of Nizhny Novgorod last week.

Ryabov, however, said it was more likely that Luzhkov would "use his authority to win the December elections and bring his men into the Moscow City Duma." "This will be the only way to retain his position at the helm of the city for some time longer," he said.

What does it all mean? I'd be lying if I said I thought I knew. But it will be interesting to watch the battle, if there is one, unfold, since Luzhkov has definitely been one of the great political survivors of the post-Soviet period.