Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Saturday said there was nothing unusual in the mass protests against his domination of Russia, describing the turbulence as the "unavoidable price of democracy.”

Tens of thousands took to the streets on December 10 and December 24 to denounce the alleged rigging of parliamentary elections and the Russian strongman himself, ahead of his candidacy in March presidential polls.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Tuesday belittled Russia's protest movement as lacking any clear aims and rejected their demands for a review of the results of disputed parliamentary polls.

"They have no united program, clear ways of reaching their aims -- which are themselves not clear -- or people who could achieve something concrete," Putin said in comments broadcast by state television.

Vladimir Putin still has the support of a majority of Russians, his spokesman said Sunday after a mass protest challenged the premier's authority two months before he stands in presidential polls.

Organizers said 120,000 people attended the rally in central Moscow Saturday where protesters chanted slogans against Prime Minister Putin and called for the annulment of disputed December parliamentary elections won by his party.

The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, called on Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Saturday to heed protester demands and quit politics instead of seeking a third term as Russian president.

"I would advise Vladimir Putin to leave now. He has had three terms: two as president and one as prime minister. Three terms -- that is enough," Gorbachev told Moscow Echo radio in an interview.

Tens of thousands of people on Saturday filled an avenue in Moscow to protest against the alleged rigging of parliamentary polls, in a new challenge to Russian strongman Vladimir Putin's authority.

Clutching white balloons and banners with the slogan "For Free Elections", the protestors thronged Sakharov Avenue in Moscow, symbolically named after the Nobel-winning dissident Andrei Sakharov who for years defied the USSR.

President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday warned that "extremists" were seeking to whip up instability in Russia through the protest wave that has rattled the Kremlin after disputed parliamentary polls.

In his last annual address to the nation before his expected handover of power to Vladimir Putin next year, Medvedev sternly vowed that Russia would not allow the West to interfere in its biggest outburst of protests in years.

Russia's lower house of parliament on Wednesday voted in strongman Vladimir Putin's ally and former Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Naryshkin as its new speaker as it met for its first session.

The first session of the State Duma dominated by Putin's United Russia ruling party came in defiance of mass protests sparked by opposition claims it was elected in rigged polls.

Russia's ruling party Saturday designated Sergei Naryshkin, a confidant of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and a former KGB official like him, to head the new lower house of parliament.

Putin's United Russia party won legislative elections held on December 4 with 49.3 percent, losing its constitutional majority and sparking public anger culminating in a series of mass protests across the country.

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.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday expressed regret that the leaders of the USSR did not fight to the last to prevent its collapse two decades ago.

"The USSR should have started timely economic reforms and changes as well as reforms to strengthen democratic change in the country," ex-KGB agent Putin told Russian television viewers in a phone-in.