Thousands protested yesterday against Vladimir Putin’s domination of Russia after his crushing election victory, but the event struggled to live up to the success of past mass rallies.

The worst thing that can happen is that we get demoralised and say that the authorities have won- Garry Kasparov

The Moscow protest, which ended with a handful of arrests, was a fraction of the size of previous rallies, in a sign the opposition is finding it hard to maintain momentum after Putin won a third term as president on March 4.

Organisers openly questioned whether mass protests were the best format to challenge Putin after their sixth rally in three months, with many suggesting it was time to organise themselves into a serious political force.

Moscow city hall had approved a demonstration of up to 50,000 people on the New Arbat street in the city centre, but police put the number attending at 10,000. At previous rallies, around 100,000 people turned out.

One of the protest organisers, liberal politician Vladimir Ryzhkov, told the rally that 25,000 people had come, although AFP correspondents estimated the figure was well below this.

“It’s normal that the rallies are dying down,” political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin, who organised vote observers at the elections and spoke at the protest, told AFP. “We need something else – a move to political activity.”

At the end of the tightly policed protest, leftist leader Sergei Udaltsov attempted to lead an unsanctioned march of around 60 people, but police roughly detained him and several others. He was released but will have to appear in court next week.

The protest leaders, many of whom had observed the polls, repeatedly said that Putin’s election to president was illegitimate and urged the demonstrators to keep up the pressure.

Putin, currently prime minister, won 63.6 per cent of the vote in the elections and is now preparing for a May inauguration to take back the Kremlin job he held from 2000-2008 from his protege Dmitry Medvedev.

“The worst thing that can happen is that we get demoralised and say that the authorities have won,” said former world chess champion Garry Kasparov. “We have experienced resistance for the first time and it is just the start.”

Udaltsov urged people to turn out for another large rally which he vowed would muster “one million people” in May ahead of the “pretender” Putin’s inauguration as president on May 7.

But journalist and television presenter Ksenia Sobchak told the rally the opposition needed to clarify its demands. “We all know what we are against, we must show what we are for,” she said, to whistling from some in the crowd.

People at the rally said they wanted to keep up pressure on the authorities, but voiced disappointment at the turnout.

“I am a bit disappointed by people’s passivity. The rally hasn’t even finished, and half the people have left,” said Vitaly Yershov, 30, who had attended all the rallies since December.

Police said they detained around 25 nationalists who walked out of the rally and tried to carry out two protests nearby.

The security forces also arrested around 40 at an unsanctioned march Saturday in the northwestern city of St Petersburg, an AFP journalist witnessed.

At another unsanctioned protest, truncheon-wielding police detained around 50 in the central Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, an opposition activist said.

The movement as a whole now needs to change tactics, journalist Sergei Parkhomenko, one of the main organisers of the Moscow rallies, told Kommersant FM radio.

“I’m not sure the next eventwill be a rally. In my opinion,we drew a really beautiful conclusion to a three-month cyclethat started in December. I think the time has come now to analysewhat has happened, regroup and move on.”

The protests came a day after US President Barack Obama phoned Putin to congratulate him on his election victory, in a call made several days after other world leaders, underlining the importance of their relationship.

The controversy over elections and demonstrations has on occasion tested US-Russia relations, with Putin accusing Washington of funding non-government groups to question the polls and spark protests.