Marchers target Putin's city ahead of vote

Russian protest leader Alexei Navalny led thousands through the streets of Vladimir Putin's native city Saturday in protest against his likely return to the Kremlin in March 4 polls.

The demonstration was called a day before thousands more hoped to link hands around Moscow in a poignant show of frustration with the ex-KGB spy's decision to seek a third presidential term after dominating Russia for 12 years.

"The event on March 4 cannot be called an election," Navalny told reporters before heading to the central Moscow Station depot in Saint Petersburg for the march.

"People should be not looking at it as an election but as an opportunity to create as much stress for the authorities as possible ... by voting for anyone but Putin," Navalny said.

Thousands then snaked their way along the city's scenic embankments chanting "Russia without Putin" and "Putin is a thief" -- a chant that would have been unimaginable just months ago -- while police helicopters circled overhead.

The 35-year-old Navalny has gained prominence among Russia's Internet-savvy youth for waging a tireless web campaign to expose state corruption.

He is now one of the most recognised protest figures and drew some of the loudest cheers at a mass January rally in Moscow when he threatened to lead one million people in a march on Putin's government White House.

Navalny has also done little to hide aspirations to run for president one day.

"Every person involved in politics has political ambitions. My ambitions stretch as far as my voters can take me," Navalny said Saturday.

Police in both Russia's former tsarist capital and Moscow had refused to sanction such events for much of the past decade as Putin established a tight regime under which the state grabbed control of various aspects of society.

But that policy changed when angry protests began to shake major cities following December 5 parliamentary elections in which the ruling party managed to barely hang on to its majority of seats in a fraud-tainted poll.

The authorities' refusal to fully investigate many of the tampering claims and call for a new parliamentary vote has forced the protest movement to channel its anger instead on Putin's planned return for a six-year term.

Putin is being challenged by four marginally opposition figures who have been given little credit by the anti-Putin movement and are destined to lose by an overwhelming margin.

The latest polls and forecasts show Putin winning in the first round with around 10 percentage points fewer than the 71 percent he secured on his re-election to a second term in 2004.

"The state has obviously decided to declare Putin winner in the first round," said former chess champion and harsh Putin critic Garry Kasparov.

"It does not matter how much he really gets. The figure will turn out being around 60 percent," Kasparov said, sitting beside Navalny.

Putin has served as Russia's powerful prime minister for the past four years after hand-picking Dmitry Medvedev as his Kremlin successor.

The elections are already set to be followed by still more demonstrations both on the day after the vote and on March 8, a public holiday for International Women's Day.

"If they falsify the vote again, we will come out for a decisive battle after March 4," said radical left leader Sergei Udaltsov.

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