Putin accuses US of sparking election unrest

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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused the United States of provoking the post-election protests in Russia that have posed a surprise challenge to his decade-long era of domination.

Harking back to the rhetoric of the Cold War, Putin accused US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of deliberately sending a signal to the opposition to protest by questioning the fairness of the weekend's parliamentary polls.

Around 1,000 people have been arrested in three days of protests in Moscow alleging mass fraud in the parliamentary polls, but organisers have vowed to stage a mass protest in Moscow at the weekend.

In his first public comments on the demonstrations, Putin accused Clinton of criticising the polls before having even read the reports of international monitors.

Washington, he said, was paying Russian groups to find fault with the elections. And that US criticism 'had set the tone for some people inside the country and given a signal', Putin argued.

"They heard the signal and with the support of the US State Department started active work."

Clinton on Monday complained the polls were neither free nor fair, a concern echoed by the last president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev who on Wednesday called for them to be re-run due to ballot rigging.

But Putin accused the West of funding Russian NGOs to the tune of 'hundreds of millions of dollars' with the aim of questioning the validity of the elections.

"This is unacceptable," he said.

Independent poll monitoring group Golos has said it was subjected to severe harassment by the authorities since the build-up to the elections, with its communications paralysed and its chief detained for hours.

Putin said Russia would hold to account those who 'dance to the tune of a foreign state'.