Anti-Putin rally being held today

Tens of thousands of Russians prepared yesterday to stage the biggest national protest of Vladimir Putin’s rule amid signs of swelling anger over fraud charges in a highly contested poll.

Today’s main rally in Moscow – sanctioned by the police after days of talks with the opposition – is expected to draw 30,000 people to a square across the river from the Kremlin under the slogan “For Fair Elections.”

But the opposition is also organising rallies in at least 14 other major cities in a rare outpouring of mistrust in a system put in place by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin when he first became president in 2000.

Last Sunday’s vote was narrowly won by Mr Putin’s ruling party but accompanied by a flood of video footage shot by ordinary Russians and posted on the internet appearing to show ballot stuffing and other widespread manipulation.

The protests that followed have posed a surprise challenge to Putin and saw the Russian strongman on Thursday launch a lacerating attack on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her expressions of concern.

Mr Putin accused Mrs Clinton of deliberately sending a signal to the opposition to rise up and protest and the State Department of paying Russian groups to find fault with the elections.

He said Washington’s criticism “had set the tone for some people inside the country and given a signal”. US State Department spokesman Mark Toner retorted that “nothing could be further from the truth”.

The exchange set a tense tone to Mr Putin’s expected return to the Kremlin next year in a presidential poll in March that could see the former intelligence agent stay in power through 2024.

Washington had attempted to “reset” ties with Mr Putin’s hand-picked successor Dmitry Medvedev after a brief 2008 war between Russia and US ally Georgia caused diplomatic tensions to rise to Soviet-era proportions.

“For the first time since the ‘reset’, relations between Moscow and Washington... are starting to fray,” the Vedomosti business daily remarked.

City authorities have allowed up to 30,000 people to gather on a square facing the Kremlin across the Moscow River – a location that helps the police halt any attempt by the opposition to march on government buildings.

But some 35,000 people have already pledged on a Facebook page to attend the 2 p.m meeting on Bolotnaya (Marsh) Square in the biggest opposition protest in Mos­cow since the turbulent late 1990s.

Others vowed to show up at a site closer to the Kremlin in what threatens to blow up into a confrontation with some of the 52,000 police and riot troops .

Around 1,600 people have already been arrested in three days of protests in Moscow and Putin’s native city of Saint Petersburg – a cultural capital with a tradition of opposition thought going back to pre-Soviet times.

Yet the Kremlin is now facing the threat of demonstrations spreading to the Russian regions after groups also organised events for cities stretching from Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga River to Siberia.