Prime minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States of encouraging protests over Russia's parliamentary election and said hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign funds were used to influence the vote.
In his first public remarks about daily demonstrations by protesters alleging Sunday's vote was fraudulent and unfair, Putin said US secretary of state Hillary Clinton "gave a signal" to Kremlin opponents.
"She set the tone for some opposition activists, gave them a signal, they heard this signal and started active work," Mr Putin said.
Mr Putin said some of the demonstrators who have protested daily over allegations of election fraud were pursuing selfish political aims and that most Russians do not want political upheaval.
"We are all adults here and we understand that some ... of the organisers act in accordance with a well-known scenario and in their own mercenary political interests," he said.
The United States has expressed serious concern about the conduct of the Russian election, which Mrs Clinton suggested was not free or fair.
Ms Clinton said today she had expressed "well-founded" concerns about the conduct of Russia's parliamentary election and that the United States was not alone in expressing concerns.
"Human rights is part of who we are. And we expressed concerns that we thought were well founded about the conduct of the elections," she said.
"We are supportive of the rights and aspirations of the Russian people to be able to make progress and realise a better future for themselves."
Mrs Clinton also said that US-Russian disagreement over the Western alliance's plans for a missile defence system in Europe did not justify Russia taking military counter-measures.
While repeating Nato's desire to cooperate with Russian on the project, she said she had made clear at a meeting of Nato foreign ministers with their Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov that the United States would go ahead with deploying missile defences to defend Nato territory.
She said the system "will not and cannot affect Russia's strategic balance".
"It does not affect our strategic balance with Russia and certainly is not a cause for military countermeasures," she said, referring to Russian threats to deploy missiles near Nato territory.
Last month Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said he would arm Russia with missiles capable of countering the US shield and set up an early-warning radar system in its Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Lithuania and Poland.
Reuters