Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Putin is forbidden by the constitution from holding the presidency more than twice in a row, but has said that a big victory at the weekend would give him a “moral right” to retain a role in politics.

President Vladimir Putin on Monday accused the United States of attempting to “discredit” Russia’s upcoming parliamentary elections, claiming Washington had pressured international monitors to boycott the polls.

Putin made his accusation during a campaign trip to his hometown Saint Petersburg ahead of Sunday’s polls, and in the wake of a violent police break-up of opposition protests and the jailing of chess legend Garry Kasparov at the weekend.

Putin said that monitors from the respected Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) cancelled a planned mission to Russia “on the recommendation of the American State Department. We will take this into account in our inter-state relations.”

“The aim is to discredit the elections, but they won’t achieve their goal,” he said.

The OSCE had explained its decision as being forced by Moscow’s lack of cooperation.

Putin, who heads the candidate list for the ruling United Russia party, was visiting Russia’s second city, where he grew up, to inspect a new housing programme and meet families of servicemen.

His campaigning for United Russia has intensified speculation that he intends to retain power in some form after stepping down as president, as required by the constitution, at the end of his second term next year.

The upper house of parliament on Monday confirmed March 2 as the date of next year’s presidential election in which Putin cannot stand.

The VTsIOM research company confirmed that United Russia is heading for a crushing victory, showing that the party would garner 62.1 percent of the vote, enough to get well over two thirds of seats in the State Duma under rules of proportional representation.

Putin’s visit to the former imperial capital followed the weekend arrest and sentencing to five days in jail of Kasparov, a former world chess champion who now heads a coalition of Putin opponents, The Other Russia.

Kasparov’s arrest for public order offences at a Moscow rally and the arrest of about 200 activists at another demonstration in Saint Petersburg drew sharp criticism from the United States.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said that Washington was “concerned by the aggressive tactics used by Russian authorities against opposition protesters.”

Another opposition leader who was briefly detained in Saint Petersburg on Sunday, former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, lambasted the authorities’ conduct and said he saw little chance of fair elections.

“There is absolutely no doubt that these elections will not be recognised anywhere in the world as free and democratic,” Nemtsov, a protege of Putin’s predecessor Boris Yeltsin, told journalists.

Putin is forbidden by the constitution from holding the presidency more than twice in a row, but has said that a big victory at the weekend would give him a “moral right” to retain a role in politics.