Vladimir Putin would lose honest election, "said the former Russian PM

Vladimir Putin has been shaken by the recent protests against his regime and loses an honest election if he had the courage to allow one, a former Russian prime minister has claimed.

In a lengthy consultation with the Sun Telegraph, Mikhail Kasyanov, who served as prime minister under Putin from 2000-2004, claimed that Putin was Running Scared.

Vladimir Putin

"He is angry and frightened and lost her self-control," said Kasyanov, who tried to run against Putin as president in 2008, only to be disqualified on what he said was a technically false.

"Putin understands that the social pressure on him is growing all the time. He is nervous."

Mr. Kasyanov, used to be on good terms with the leader of the Russian fort until he and his cabinet were unceremoniously fired by the president, then in 2004, said he felt it was the beginning of the end for Mr. Putin.

"For the first time I have no doubt that if I or one of my colleagues was registered as a presidential candidate we would certainly win the second ballot. Putin no doubt that too is why he is afraid of us. "

Among the leaders of the party of freedom of the people against the Kremlin and Parnas, M. Kasyanov, 54, was among the speakers at the anti-government last weekend of protest in Moscow last week that brought together until to 50,000 people.

Amid growing anger among the middle classes to endemic official corruption, authoritarianism, and the total domination of Mr. Putin and his friends, it was the biggest event of it is kindly since the fall of 1991 the Soviet Union.

Mr. Kasyanov was the target of particular criticism by Putin a question and answers on television on Thursday. In one of many angry tirades, Putin said that Mr. Kasyanov was planning to challenge him for the presidency, even when he was the Prime Minister and darkly hinted that his former subordinate has been corrupted, some Mr. Kasyanov thing has always categorically denied.

Putin, who's been in force for almost 12 years as either president or prime minister, faces the biggest challenge to his authority again. Determined to come back to the presidency for a controversial third time in May next year, he is faced with calls for the resignation of the country squeezed middle class members after a rigged election would soon this month.

Putin to power, United Russia has seen it is share of the voting fall by 15 percent during the contested election, noting Putin's own popularity has dropped to 51 percent, its lowest level this year, a new poll showed Friday. Kasyanov said that people were simply tired of the co. and complete deficiency of democracy in all spheres of life. "There was never a true democracy in Russia, but there were at least a few attempts to build it. But now there is nothing left."

Controversial, Mister. Kasyanov said his party would not even attempt to register a candidate for the next presidential election, however.

Applicants need two million signatures to run and Mr. Kasyanov said that he and his colleagues were some of the Kremlin would be the dream of a false pretext to block them as they were forbidden to take part in elections legislation this month on a technicality.

"The elections are not free," he said. "The collection of signatures is the rule of a mechanism to prevent independent candidates to run for office without the approval of the Kremlin. We want to take part and we are ready to take part, but we can not. "Instead, he said his party would lend their support to Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the small liberal Yabloko (Apple), the party whose views were closest to his.

The goal, he said, was to keep the pressure on Mr. Putin, including events, and to ensure that the presidential election of March 4 was free and fair.

"Our goal is not to allow Putin to the Kremlin back and to do this we need to isolate it completely, including morally," he said.

When asked to say when he thought Putin could be ousted, Mr. Kasyanov has denied any parallels with the Arab spring or color revolutions is known in different parts of the past Soviet Union and conceded that dethroned the former KGB spy is not an easy process.

"There will be no revolution that we are committed to using only peaceful means," he said.

Instead, he said, the opposition believed that the disenchantment with Putin would become so great that it would encourage people to stop taking orders and possibly trigger a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience.

"If Putin wins the elections in March obviously falsified the wave of protests against him will be enormous," he predicted. "We are forecasting serious changes in the spring or a year or two when people cotton on that they were duped and the authorities will no longer be able to govern."

Meanwhile, he said that the opposition had understood from punchy Putin, four and a half hours due and answers on state television that he would not yield easily. "It does not give up," said Kasyanov.

"But the battle continues, sooner or later we will win."