Putin Aide Says Foreign Hands Are Behind Protests

In this Monday, Jan. 30, 2012 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, center, looks at new equipment as he visits an assembly shop of the Tikhvin railway car building factory, in Tikhvin, about 170 km (106 miles) east of St. Petersburg, Russia, which produces new models of freight cars created by the technology of North-American businesses. The prime minister's tightly choreographed appearance at the factory in the northwestern city of Tikhvin got top billing on all three Kremlin-controlled networks _ and points to his campaign strategy as he tries to recapture the presidency in March. (AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Government Press Service)

MOSCOW — On the eve of a third major anti-government demonstration, a trusted aide to Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin said that Russian intelligence services “two or three years ago” reported that there were plans for the outbreak of street protests in Moscow, implying that a blueprint for political unrest was drawn up in Washington.

The aide, Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, said in an interview on Thursday that the authorities saw the protests as evidence of growing demands for political participation, especially among the urban middle class, and would introduce “significant changes in terms of liberalizing and modernizing our political system.”

But he also reiterated Mr. Putin’s earlier claim that the United States has played an important role by sending money “to provoke the situation.” He said that Russian intelligence services had long warned that protests were planned, using information gathered from various countries.

Full story: Putin Aide Says Foreign Hands Are Behind Protests