Putin win triggers biggest protest since the fall of the Soviet Union

Several prominent Russian opposition leaders were arrested by riot police last night (Monday) as they tried to protest against a presidential election result that international monitors said was "clearly skewed" in Vladimir Putin's favour.

Alexei Navalny, the talisman of the anti-Putin movement, was among a hardcore of more than 120 activists who were held by police after they attempted to occupy Moscow's Pushkin Square.

They had been attempting to continue an earlier, sanctioned demonstration against Mr Putin's victory - attended by about 15,000 people - when riot police charged in and forcibly evicted them as they tried to set up camp.

There were chaotic scenes as officers dragged Ilya Yashin, a leader of the Solidarity opposition movement, and other activists through the snow toward waiting vans. Sergei Udaltsov, a radical leader of the Left Front, was also among those detained.

It came after election observers said there were "serious problems" with an election in which Mr Putin won a historic third term as Russian president with more than 64 per cent of the vote.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said the vote was beset by irregularities and that the "abuse of government resources ensured that the ultimate winner of the election was never in doubt".

"Conditions [for the campaign] were clearly skewed in favour of... Vladimir Putin", it said, while the election process "deteriorated during the count which was assessed negatively in nearly a third of polling stations".

Tonino Picula, the head of the OSCE parliamentary assembly delegation, added: "The point of an election is that the outcome should be uncertain. This was not the case in Russia. It was not a level playing field."

The United States urged Russia to conduct an independent investigation into all the allegations. "We urge the Russian government to conduct an independent, credible investigation of all reported electoral violations," a State Department spokesman said.

David Cameron spoke to Mr Putin last night by telephone, telling him that Britain would work with Russia to overcome differences between the two countries.

The Prime Minister said he "looked forward to working with Mr Putin to build deeper political and trade links".

Before his arrest last night, Mr Navalny led protesters in Moscow as they demonstrated against Mr Putin's triumph, whipping up the crowd with cries of "Russia without Putin!" Mr Yashin had also given a speech, mocking the new president for crying during his victory rally on Sunday: "Those were not tears of joy. No, my friends, it was fear - fear in the eyes of a dictator," said Mr Yashin. "Putin knows perfectly well that he has lost his legitimacy in the eyes of the people."

Mr Putin met three of the four losing candidates earlier and promised them to investigate allegations of electoral fraud. He said he would ask Vladimir Churov, the chairman of Russia's election commission elections chief to "thoroughly check all possible violations about which you have spoken." But Mr Churov was swift to dismiss claims of mass fraud, saying that there were likely no more than 300 irregularities compared with the 4,000 suggested by civil election observers. Independent monitoring groups earlier reported numerous cases of "carousel voting" in which people are driven around to vote for one candidate at several polling stations.

Bizarrely, Mr Churov also accused international observers of being spies, saying: "More and more often, monitors feel the irresistible desire to penetrate border zones, closed nuclear sites, missile centres and so on. The number of those with such a desire is growing."

William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, delayed issuing a statement on the vote, which is customary the day after a major election. His office had said that it was awaiting the preliminary report of the OSCE mission, and stressed that "as a Council of Europe member state, Russia has an obligation to uphold key democratic norms and standards".

Baronness Ashton, the European Union's chief diplomat, merely said the bloc "took note" of the outcome of the election.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, spoke to Mr Putin to wish him success in his presidency, but Guido Westerwelle, the German foreign minister, said he hoped Russia would recognise that it was on "the wrong side of history" and rethink its stance on Syria.

Unsurprisingly, the most effusive statements came from Damascus, which has benefited from Russia's defence at the United Nations, and China.

Syria's official Sana news agency said President Bashar al-Assad "offered in his name and that of the Syrian people his sincere congratulations for his remarkable election".