Russia's Medvedev to follow Obama's lead... by joining the Twittersphere

Dmitry Medvedev, the incumbent Russian President, could soon be set to follow in his American adversary Barack Obama’s footsteps if reports emerging from Russia this evening are true that he intends to launch his own account on the social media website, Twitter.

The newsru.com website carries the story that staff of the Russian president’s office have sent an official request to the team behind Twitter urging them to delete existing accounts opened under the name of Dmitry Medvedev, in order for them to launch an official one later in the year.

Once such account, ru_medvedev, began posting on March 29th, the day of the tragic bomb attacks on the Moscow subway, and claimed to be the first official reaction from the President to the attacks, and subsequently the quotes were picked up by the local media. However, the administration of President denies any connection with this account and says it was created by an individual acting on his own initiative.

While not revealing any futher details, newsru.com quotes a Kremlin spokesperson confirming that later this summer the president plans to create an official account in the Global micro blogging service. "So that everything works well, we need someone to handle [the blog]. We are currently working on this project.”

The Russian president portrays himself as a young and technologically savvy leader – so perhaps it is a surprise he has yet to jump on the Twitter bandwagon. After all, he has a Live Journal blog as well as an account on YouTube…