Russia's anti-Putin forces reach crossroads

Russia's young opposition movement will need to mature quickly if it hopes to unite in a common cause wider than simple anger at Vladimir Putin's return to the Kremlin, analysts said.

The motley alliance that rose from a fraud-tainted December parliamentary ballot remains shut out of Russia's political system and lacks a natural leader like Boris Yeltsin was when he stood up against a coup attempt in 1991.

Its only unifying factors are its hope to see a "Russia without Putin" and its dissatisfaction with the prospects of an entire generation growing up under a man who emerged from the KGB to establish what is effectively one-party rule.

But the absence of another election to rally around for years to come, and opposition forces' exclusion from positions of power means that they might end up splintering before making any serious gains.

"The protest movement is not a government-in-waiting, nor is it currently capable of seizing power. There is no united long-term plan, united policy programme or economic strategy," the European Council on Foreign Relations wrote in a report.

"The opposition will survive however, although it may now depend on Putin making mistakes to catapult it forward."

Some of the demonstrations' current leaders say their future direction may be decided by how the authorities respond to post-election protests planned in Moscow in the coming week.

"I think the future will be decided not on (election day Sunday) but on Monday," said the popular Russian detective novelist and protest leader Boris Akunin.

"If the authorities show restraint (against the protests), things will go one way and if they do not -- in a completely different direction.

"If the regime decides on a course of harsh confrontation ... the opposition will acquire new, more radical leaders," Akunin warned.

Putin scored a crushing presidential election victory at the polls Sunday, earning himself a six-year term following an election which the opposition said was marred by serial violations.

No figure unites the resistance more that the anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny -- a charismatic 35-year-old lawyer with a militant style.

Navany cooked up the term "crooks and thieves" to describe the corruption eating away at Putin's party -- a phrase which has become a mantra for the new opposition.

He has backed setting up a tent city in central Moscow to stage a non-stop protest, reminiscent of the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, until Putin resigns.

And he has talked about one day leading a million-strong march on Putin's offices should the government not call new elections under more democratic rules.

"Everyone who feels like it can peacefully and slowly move toward Manezh Square (facing the Kremlin) after the Pushkin Square meeting," Navalny wrote on his Twitter feed on Saturday in reference to the venue for Monday night's opposition rally.

Akunin and more cautious Kremlin critics oppose this, but Navalny is gaining rock star status among some Internet-savvy youth.

The rise of the opposition movement has caused unease among those who owe their careers to Putin, analysts suggest.

"The political system needs change, but Putin and the people around him are afraid to do it," said Alexander Konovalov of Moscow's Institute for Strategic Assessments.

"Putin's departure would mean the departure of a vast number of people around him, and none of them want to leave," Konovalov said.

But some analysts say the main risk to Russia is not political violence but the longer-term exclusion of an increasingly politicised middle class whose sense of fear of the authorities is waning.

"Russians are beginning to flex their muscles as citizens rather than to behave merely as subjects," said the London-based Chatham House institute.

"A next wave of protest in the Soviet-era provincial industrial cities, fuelled by social and economic discontent, is inevitable."

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