RUSSIA: Russia's leading opposition parties have formed an alliance, burying years of acrimony, in preparation for upcoming Moscow city elections.
Yabloko and the Union of Rightist Forces (URF) will field a joint list of candidates in what they say is a determined effort to confront the country's president Vladimir Putin with something he does not now face - an opposition.
Both parties were wiped out in national parliamentary elections two years ago, which saw Mr Putin's United Russia Party sweep to victory.
Since then, the president, in control of parliament and government, has cancelled elections for regional governors who he now appoints himself.
Yabloko leader Grigori Yavlinski promised that the alliance will be a "potent political force", promising to increase its total of three MPs in the 35-seat Moscow parliament. The vote for the Moscow parliament, or Duma, is seen as a key popularity test for the government.
Mr Putin, who must step down at the end of his second term in 2008, has seen his popularity drop to 40 per cent from the 70 per cent ratings he once enjoyed, with voters dissatisfied with slow growth and widespread corruption.
But the new alliance is not predicting a Ukraine-style "Orange Revolution" to sweep the existing power base away in the December 4th poll.
"I don't think it's possible," says Sergei Ivanenko, Yabloko's first deputy president. "I would not like Russia to face another revolution. We have got quite a democratic constitution, we just have to be faithful to it."
In his cramped party headquarters in downtown Moscow, the talk is of the party building a "bridgehead" for future success.
Victory will probably go to Mr Putin's party, supported by Moscow's popular mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. He once coveted Mr Putin's chair, but later threw his lot in with the Kremlin and he is likely to plump up support for United Russia.
The new alliance patches a split that has long divided the liberal Yabloko and the centre-right URF since Russia became a democracy in 1991.
In the 1990s, the URF supported the fast-track capitalism of former president Boris Yeltsin while Yabloko opposed it. The split widened in 1993 when Mr Yeltsin, supported by the URF, shelled the White House, occupied by Communist hardliners.