Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin defended his country’s progress in democracy and affirmed its cooperation with Washington in a wide-ranging interview as he brushed aside comments from cables released by WikiLeaks.

Mr Putin told CNN’s Larry King in an interview aired late on Wednesday that Russia is cooperating with the US on key issues related to Iran and North Korean nuclear programmes.

And Mr Putin offered a harsh rebuke to comments in cables released by WikiLeaks suggesting that Russian democracy is disappearing and that cooperation with Washington has fallen short.

Mr Putin said defence secretary Robert Gates was “deeply misled” about Russian democracy and warned US officials not to “interfere” in Russia’s internal politics.

“Our country is led by the people of the Russian Federation through the legitimately elected government,” he said. “The Russian people have unilaterally made their choice in the direction of democracy in the early 1990s. And we will not be led astray.”

Mr Putin was responding to the leak of a cable from February in which Mr Gates suggested that “Russian democracy has disappeared.” Others have US diplomats referring to Russia as a “virtual mafia state” and saying that President Dmitry Medvedev plays “Robin” to Putin’s “Batman”.

“I know Mr Gates,” Mr Putin said. “I met him several times. I believe he’s a very nice person and he is not a bad expert, too.”

But the Russian leader said “he’s being deeply misled” on Russian affairs.

As to the Batman and Robin comparison, Mr Putin said it was “aimed to slander one of us”.

“This is about our interaction, which is an important factor of the domestic policies in this country,” he said.

He also denied Russia was moving tactical nuclear weapons near Nato allies, and pointed the finger back at the West for escalating tensions on the issue.

“It’s not us who are moving forward our missiles to your territory,” he told the interviewer, responding to a report that Moscow is moving tactical nuclear warheads to within miles of its borders with Nato countries.

Western powers, Mr Putin said, are “planning to mount missiles at the vicinity of our borders, of our territory” in a bid to secure against the threat of Iran’s alleged nuclear drive.

Cables in brief

Putin ‘may have known about spy death plot’ ­

Senior American officials believed Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin could have known about the plan to murder dissident former spy Alexander Litvinenko in London, the latest leaked US diplomatic cables have revealed.

Washington’s senior diplomat in Europe, assistant secretary of state Daniel Fried, challenged suggestions that the killing was the work of “rogue elements” in the Russian security forces, adding that it would have been difficult for the operation to go ahead without Mr Putin’s knowledge, such was his attention to detail.

The documents also describe Russia as a “virtual mafia state” in which the activities of the government and organised crime are indistinguishable, according to The Guardian, which had advance access to the material.

Ex-minister: Was US misled on cluster munitions?

The US may have been “led up the garden path” by Britain over a secret deal to allow them to get round a ban on cluster munitions, a former foreign office minister said yesterday.

Labour’s Chris Bryant, who steered the UK’s ratification of the ban through Parliament last year, insisted the legislation was too tightly drawn to allow any exceptions.

A diplomatic cable among thousands posted on the WikiLeaks website suggested the idea of a “case-by-case temporary storage exception” had the backing of then foreign secretary David Miliband.

It would allow America, for “specific missions”, to store cluster munitions on UK territory – such as the Indian Ocean Diego Garcia base – even after the 2013 date set for their final removal.

In the leaked report of a US/UK meeting, Nicolas Pickard, head of the Foreign Office security policy group, is reported as suggesting any deal be kept from MPs in the short term.

Argentina’s President ‘dominated by husband’

Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez was “submissive” to her powerful husband who was a controlling “monster”, her former Cabinet chief told a US official, according to new US diplomatic cables.

Sergio Massa, who led Ms Fernandez’s cabinet in 2008 and 2009, said during a September 2009 meeting with a US diplomat that Ms Fernandez “deferred to her husband on all matters, and that in practice she only took orders”, according to a cable.

Ms Fernandez was married to former President Nestor Kirchner, who died on October 27.

A leaked cable said that during a dinner in November 2009 with US Ambassador to Argentina Vilma Martinez, Mr Massa described Argentina’s President as “submissive, withdrawn” and said she would be “much better without Nestor than she is with him”.

China calls WikiLeaks content ‘absurd’

China lashed out yesterday at WikiLeaks, dubbing its content “absurd”.

When asked about WikiLeaks, foreign ministry official Jiang Yu said China refused to comment on the “absurd content of their website,” giving no other details. Some of the documents contained allegations that China may have turned a blind eye to illicit exports of North Korean missile parts and that the top Chinese leadership was behind cyberattacks on Google and US targets.

China’s foreign ministry spokes-man Hong Lei on had urged the US to act on the issue, but refused to comment on individual leaks involving Beijing.

In one cable, Chinese officials are quoted as calling the erratic North Korean regime – China’s close ally – a “spoiled child”.

Sarkozy called Russian Foreign Minister a ‘liar’

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a “liar” during negotiations with Moscow following the August 2008 conflict with Georgia, according to a US memo.

Mr Sarkozy negotiated the ceasefire agreement that brought an end to the war, which saw Russian troops pour into Georgia to repel a Georgian military assault on Moscow-backed South Ossetia.

“...Sarkozy caught the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by the lapel of his jacket, and called him a liar...,” an American diplomat reported in a memo released by the whistle-blower website and quoted by French daily Le Monde.