Moscow -- Check out the Russian blogs, though, and you'll as often as not find sharp, witty criticism of First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev — and the presidential contest he seems certain of winning.

One blogger named “lekka-reka” said an old lady asked him on the street: “Have they named Medvedev president yet or will we be able to actually go out and cast our votes?”

Another blogger named “YUGva” was worried about Medvedev's liberal image: “This Medvedev is a strange personality, a dark horse. ... I think he's just going to skip out on Russia, sell it to America and the West — and everyone is openly lauding his arrival?”

The postings by Web commentators, professionals and amateurs alike, are sometimes barbed, frequently satirical and always unfiltered — a marked contrast to most of Russia's major media, where many reporters, editors and producers are wary of angering the Kremlin.

During Putin's eight years in office, the Kremlin has extended and strengthened its control over the news media, mainly through the purchase of national broadcasters and major newspapers by state-controlled corporations or loyal billionaires.

Anyone interested in probing reporting or frank commentary has few places to turn. But increasingly, savvy Russians are finding it on the Internet.

“The propaganda on TV doesn't work for anyone anymore,” said Oleg Panfilov, a journalist advocate who is also a regular blogger.

The Internet's uncontrolled nature has long worried the Kremlin. Parliament's upper house is considering legislation that would make Web sites with more than 1,000 readers daily subject to the same regulations as print media. And some Web advocates fear a newly updated law on publishing allegedly extremist literature could be used to prosecute bloggers critical of authorities.

There are also allegations the Kremlin has organized teams of its own bloggers to attack or rebut critics of the government through Web postings.

But Stanislav Belkovsky, an analyst with the Moscow think-tank National Strategy Institute, said these pro-Kremlin bloggers have little influence: “No one's interested in people who write the same thing as you can read in the pro-Kremlin newspapers.”

Still, Russian political blogs don't appear to be as popular or influential as they are in the United States. That's partly because of the Kremlin's near monopoly on political power.

Access to the Internet is limited. The phone system is antiquated, meaning connections are slow. Internet service is difficult to find in poorer provinces and personal computers are a luxury.

Communicating across Russia — which spans 11 time zones — has always been difficult, and Russian leaders have long relied on television to reach widely scattered communities.

Television has provided intensive — and to many, boring — coverage of Medvedev's speeches and official appearances at schools, churches, factories and other institutions for more than a year, as it has done for Putin.

On the Web, though, news consumers can find spicier fare. A recent search for Medvedev or Putin on Russia's dominant blogging and social networking site, LiveJournal, pulled up a hubbub of humorous postings, satire, opinion, links to news stories, insults and counter-insults.

One blogger from Vladivostok sought to organize a boycott of the March 2 election under the banner: “I'm not participating in this farce.” Another from St. Petersburg, who took the name “dark cloud — os,” wrote that a monarchy would suit Russia better than democracy.

Yet another, named “niagara1977,” said that reading an obituary would have been more interesting than listening to a recent Putin speech.

Putin is enormously popular, and even some journalists are angered when he is sharply questioned.

Yet even before Putin had finished the last news conference of his term on Feb. 14, the blogosphere was scoffing at some of his remarks.

“President Putin has told us that we are satisfied with his work,” wrote one blogger by the name of vla3986. “If you include ripping off the country until you can't any more as his work, then that's been done many times over.”

Another calling himself “dmitrydmitryev” wrote: “I wanted to watch Putin's news conference but I happily slept throught it. For the best, probably!”

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