Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Thursday of sparking post-election protests in the country.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Thursday of sparking post-election protests in the country.

In his first public comment on the protests, Putin vowed to punish the demonstrators who broke the law.
He lashed out at US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her criticism of Sunday’s Vote before even reading the reports of international monitors.

Clinton said the polls were neither free nor fair, echoing the last president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev who said they should be re-run due to ballot rigging.
The US criticism "had set the tone for some people inside the country and given a signal," Putin said. "They heard the signal and with the support of the US State Department started active work."

Putin also said that Russia did not want to see the instability endured by Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, two ex-Soviet states that saw regimes toppled.
"People in our country do not want the situation in Russia to develop like it was in Kyrgyzstan or in Ukraine. No-one wants chaos," Putin said.

The authorities should enter into dialogue with the opposition -- but protestors should be punished with the full force of the law if they broke the rules, he added.
"If somebody breaks the law then the security forces must implement the law with full legal means," Putin said.

The elections were seen as a test of Putin's popularity ahead of his planned return to the presidency in March 2012 polls.
His United Russia party won the polls, albeit with a reduced majority, but the opposition says the results for the ruling party would have been far worse in free polls.