The Monday evening demonstration at Pushkin Square in Moscow will be a test of whether the opposition can maintain the momentum that brought tens of thousands of people to a series of unprecedented protests in the months before the election.
The ITAR-Tass news agency cited the Interior Ministry as saying Monday that some 12,000 police and troops will be on duty to maintain order in Moscow.
Preliminary results announced Monday showed Putin getting more than 63 per cent of the vote against four challengers.
But opposition leaders and independent observers say there was widespread vote fraud. Observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) will present their findings later Monday.
The head of the major international election observer mission in Russia says there were "serious problems" in the vote that returned Putin to the presidency.
Tonino Picula said in a statement Monday that "there was no real competition, and abuse of government resources ensured that the ultimate winner of the election was never in doubt."
Picula headed the short-term observer mission of the OSCE.
A brief synopsis of the mission's findings did not address Russian independent observers' contentions that there were widespread cases of people casting multiple ballots, but said the election "process deteriorated during the vote count, which was assessed negatively in almost one-third of polling stations observed."
The Central Elections Commission says Prime Minister Putin, who was president in 2000-2008, got more than 63 per cent of the nationwide vote, but the independent Russian elections watchdog Golos says incomplete reports from its observers of individual polling station counts indicate he hovered perilously close to the 50-per cent mark needed for a first-round victory.
Original Article
Source: CBC
Author: The Associated Press
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