Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of cities across Russia today to demand an end to Vladimir Putin's rule and complain about alleged election fraud in the biggest show of defiance since he took power more than a decade ago.
Rallies were expected in dozens of cities, from Vladivostok on the Pacific coast to Kaliningrad nearly 7,400km away in the west, mounting the biggest opposition protests since Mr Putin came to power in 2000.
Riot police were out in force with dogs and in trucks, but they did little to douse protests that showed a groundswell of discontent with Mr Putin as he prepares to reclaim the presidency next year, and anger over last Sunday’s election which the opposition says was rigged to favour his United Russia party.
"Today 60,000, maybe 100,000 people, have come to this rally," former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov said in a speech to flag-waving and chanting protesters packed into Bolotnaya Square across the Moscow River from the Kremlin.
"This means today is the beginning of the end for these thieving authorities," said Mr Kasyanov, who now leads an opposition movement which was barred from the election.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, an opposition leader, read out a list of demands including annulling the election and holding a new one, registering opposition parties, dismissing the election commission head and freeing people the protesters call political prisoners.
"Russia has changed today - the future has changed," he said, urging demonstrators to come out for new protests on December 24th. The crowd chanted, "We'll be back!"
But Konstantin Kosachyov, a United Russia MP authorised to speak on behalf of the Kremlin, ruled out negotiations on the organisers' demands. "With all respect for the people who came out to protest, they are not a political party."
The rallies, many of them held in freezing snow, were a test of the opposition's ability to turn public anger into a mass protest movement on the scale of the Arab Spring rebellions that brought down rulers in the Middle East and North Africa.
Most Russian political experts say the former KGB spy who has dominated the world's largest energy producer for 12 years is in little immediate danger of being toppled and that protests are hard to keep going across such a vast country.
But they say Mr Putin's authority has been badly damaged and may gradually fade away when he returns as president unless he answers demands ranging from holding fair elections to reducing the huge gap between rich and poor.
"The time has come to throw off the chains," one of the main opposition figures, blogger Alexei Navalny, said in a message sent from jail following his arrest in a protest in Monday.
"We are not cattle or slaves. We have a voice and we have the strength to defend it," he said in the message, which drew cheers when it was read out from the stage by Oleg Kashin, an opposition journalist.
Protests on such a big scale were unthinkable before last Sunday's election, in which Mr Putin's United Russia won a vastly reduced, slim majority in the lower house. But in a sign that the Kremlin has started to sense the change of mood, most of Saturday's rallies were approved by city authorities hoping to avoid violence. State television showed footage of the protests - but no direct criticism of Putin.
Invited by messages sent on social media, people protested in dozens of cities such as Vladivostok, Novosibirsk in Siberia, Arkhangelsk in the Arctic north, in Kaliningrad and St Petersburg in the west, and in the Karelia region near Finland.
Police broke up an unapproved protest by about 400 people in Kurgan, on Russia's border with Kazakhstan, and at least 20 were detained in Khabarovsk near Russia's border with China, Russian news agencies said. Ten were held in St Petersburg, police said.
In Moscow, people of all ages gathered, many wearing white armbands or carrying white carnations they said were the symbols of their protest. "Putin must go," read a big banner in the midst of the crowd.
At least 100 trucks of riot police were parked near the Kremlin and columns of police trucks drove around the capital. Police put the number of protesters at around 25,000, and organisers said it was up to 150,000.
President Dmitry Medvedev has denied the allegations of fraud in the election, while Mr Putin has accused the United States of encouraging and financing the protesters.
The protesters were mainly angered by the election, in which they say only cheating prevented United Russia's result being worse. International monitors also said the ruling party had an unfair advantage and that they had evidence of ballot-stuffing.
Mr Putin (59), remains Russia's most popular leader in opinion polls, and has dominated the country under a political system in which power revolves around him.
Many Russians felt disenfranchised in September when he and Mr Medvedev announced plans to swap jobs after the presidential election and said they had taken the decision years ago.
Reuters