Around 8,000 people protested in Moscow and Saint Petersburg yesterday against what they say were rigged parliamentary polls that handed victory to Vladimir Putin’s ruling party.

An opposition activist, Sergei Udaltsov of the Left Front, was meanwhile in critical condition after he went on hunger strike since being detained early this month, his lawyer and wife said.

The new rallies came on the heels of a wave of protests that swept Russia the previous weekend after the opposition and independent observers said Mr Putin’s United Russia party had cheated its way to a slim majority in December 4 parliamentary polls.

More than 3,000 people attended a rally on Manezhnaya Square near the Kremlin walls organised by the Communist party, the runner-up in the parliamentary elections.

Yury Molodkin said he joined the rally because he was “outraged” by Mr Putin’s claims that protesters were in the pay of a foreign state and compared a symbol of the protests against his rule – the white ribbon – to condoms.

“I came to listen to people who are ready to fight these liars,” the 46-year-old said.

In a live televised phone-in beamed across Russia, Mr Putin claimed he wasn’t troubled by the largest protests of his 12-year rule and said he first thought the rallies were an anti-AIDS campaign and that its participants had pinned condoms to their lapels.