Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Saturday he had told his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama that Moscow attached "no importance" to Washington's criticism of this month's elections in Russia.

"Of course, I had to say one thing to him: 'You can think of our elections what you want, it is our affair. To speak frankly, we attach no importance to it'," Medvedev said of a telephone call with Obama on Friday.

U.S. lawmakers rebuked Moscow's leadership Wednesday for "manipulating" recent elections, and urged legislation to blacklist any Russian believed responsible for rights violations from traveling to the United States.

At a U.S. Senate hearing focused on corruption and rule of law in Russia, days after tens of thousands of demonstrators marched charging electoral fraud, State Department officials said they recognized a "national awakening" among Russian citizens calling for accountability of their government.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's spokesman said Monday the results of contested parliamentary polls will stand despite massive street protests and a probe by the election authorities.

"Even if you add up all this so-called evidence, it accounts for just over 0.5 percent of the total number of votes," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Agence France Presse in a telephone interview.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, whose party lost support in parliamentary elections, Thursday named a top Russian film director to head his campaign to return to the Kremlin in March presidential polls.

Stanislav Govorukhin, who directed the classic Soviet television series "The Meeting Place Cannot be Changed,” will mastermind Putin's bid to reclaim the presidency in the elections on March 4, 2012.

The Kremlin reacted furiously on Wednesday after an obscene posting mocking liberal blogger Alexei Navalny, who was jailed in this week's protests, reappeared on President Dmitry Medvedev's Twitter feed.

"Last night an inappropriate retweet appeared on Dmitry Medvedev's Twitter account," the Kremlin said in a curt statement.

The ruling party of Vladimir Putin Monday won Russia's parliamentary elections but with a sharply reduced majority, in a blow for the Russian strongman ahead of his planned return to the Kremlin in 2012.

United Russia is set to obtain 238 seats in the 450-seat State Duma, down sharply from the 315 seats it won in the last polls in 2007, election commission chief Vladimir Churov told reporters citing results from 96 percent of polling stations.

Russians prepared Saturday for parliamentary elections amid dwindling support for the ruling United Russia party and unprecedented pressure on election observers.

Voting in the world's largest country will begin at 2000 GMT Saturday in the Russian Far East regions and end 21 hours later when polling stations close at 1700 GMT Sunday in the exclave of Kaliningrad wedged between Poland and Lithuania.

Russia on Tuesday activated a radar warning system against incoming missiles in its exclave of Kaliningrad on the borders of the EU, in response to Western plans for a U.S. missile shield in Europe.

President Dmitry Medvedev announced that the Voronezh-DM station was moving onto immediate combat readiness, days after threatening to deploy missiles in Kaliningrad amid a growing dispute with the West.

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin on Sunday agreed to be the ruling party candidate in 2012 presidential elections that he is certain to win and that will fix the country's political future.

His nomination at a glitzy congress of United Russia was a formality after President Dmitry Medvedev announced in September he would give way for Putin in the March 2012 polls and instead take the job of prime minister.

A top Russian opposition group accused Vladimir Putin's ruling party on Saturday of preparing to win next week's parliamentary polls through fraud and threatened mass protests in case of an unfair result.

A Moscow rally organized by A Just Russia -- the smallest of four parties in the State Duma lower house of parliament -- drew some 500 protesters to a small square near the Kremlin under threatening skies.