Russia's Election Results to Stand Despite Unrest - Putin Spokesman

A man holds a portrait of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reading `2050 - No` during a protest rally against alleged vote rigging in Russia`s parliamentary elections, Moscow, Russia, 10 December 2011.

Russia's disputed parliamentary elections will stand in spite of the massive protests the country saw on Saturday and a pending investigation by election authorities, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin has declared.

"Even if you add up all this so-called evidence, it accounts for just over 0.5 percent of the total number of votes," PM Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov has claimed.

"So even if hypothetically you recognise that they are being contested in court, then in any case, this can in no way affect the question of the vote's legitimacy or the overall results," the spokesman has added, as cited by The Telegraph.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has already ordered election authorities to investigate reports of vote-fixing after the ruling United Russia party's victory stirred what has been described as the largest protests in the country since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Putin himself has declared "respect" for the views of tens of thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets to protest last weekend's election outcome.

More than 50 000 people gathered in Moscow on Saturday to protest against the allegedly rigged elections in the country. More than 130 cities across Russia also witnessed mass demonstrations.

Putin's pro-Kremlin United Russia party kept its absolute majority in the lower house of the Parliament, the Duma, after the recent parliamentary elections, even though it lost some seats.

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