From the FINANCIAL TIMES:
…Exact estimates of the turnout diverged wildly. Movement organisers put the total attending at 120,000, while police put it at 29,000.
The spectre of increasing protests in the run-up to March presidential election has put Mr Putin’s political future in question. Just three months ago, when he and President Dmitry Medvedev announced they would switch jobs next year, most assumed Mr Putin would stay as president for two six-year terms.
Now there is an increasing likelihood that even being elected president in March will not be as easy as it looked, and at the very least Mr Putin may have to enter a second round run-off with a challenger, if he fails to win more than 50 per cent of the vote. This could herald the steady decline of his political influence in a manner similar to Boris Yeltsin, who saw his popularity erode steadily during the 1990s…
Click here to read the full article.
