Russians love tough, macho leaders.

Former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev won applause by famously banging his shoe on the U.N. rostrum in the 1960s. Boris Yeltsin had a reputation of a true “muzhik” (a Russian version of macho) after addressing crowds from a tank during a coup and conducting an orchestra while drunk when on a visit to Germany.  On the contrary, the softer and more intellectual Mikhail Gorbachev soon lost popular appeal at home.

President Vladimir Putin has been a classical example of a “muzhik”, or macho, leader and his love of everything military has served him well with voters.

Putin’s historic flight in a supersonic military jet to Chechnya in 2000 made him an icon among many Russians. Pictures of the president in pilot’s gear immediately became hot property, boosting the president’s popularity.  The flight was followed by a string of other exotic uniformed performances by Putin including an underwater journey on a nuclear-powered submarine and a flight on a strategic bomber.

Dmitry Medvedev, a refined former St Petersburg lawyer picked by Putin as a preferred successor, does not look very macho right now. The first deputy prime minister in charge of social projects feels more at home among professors and students elaborating on open-source software or the benefits of judicial reforms.

On Wednesday, Putin has given Medvedev a chance to show himself as a “muzhik”.

A joint trip by the two to Zhukovsky, an air base outside Moscow where most of the Soviet war planes have been tested in the past 70 years, offered a lot of opportunities for Medvedev to stage a show of machismo.

A line of  the latest military jets designed by Sukhoi and MiG with their cockpits open invited high-profile visitors to have a go. But Medvedev was visibly unexcited.

He calmly and impassionately followed Putin, whose eyes were flashing with excitement, and listened to explanations by engineers and pilots. Putin had to invite Medvedev several times to join conversations and ultimately encouraged him to take a second pilot’s seat in a Yakovlev training jet.

Perhaps, Medvedev knows a different secret of becoming popular in Russia. Or has Russia changed?