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Keep off, Putin tells West

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin warned against foreign interference in his country’s political processes.

“We have done everything to rid Russia from internal shocks and to put it firmly on the path of evolutionary development,” he said at a meeting with foreign diplomats. “We will not allow this process to be corrected from outside.”

It was for the first time that the Russian leader gathered all foreign Ambassadors for a reception in the Kremlin.

The meeting took place on the day the election campaign for the March 2 presidential poll was flagged off and four days before a parliamentary vote.

Mr. Putin, who is to step down next May, is heading the election list of the main pro-Kremlin party, United Russia. Earlier this week Mr. Putin accused the U.S of engineering a controversial refusal by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s human rights and democracy watchdog to send observers to monitor the December 2 State Duma elections in Russia citing visa problems.

“We will take this into account in our relations with that country,” Mr. Putin warned.

In another public address, Mr. Putin hit out at “people in our country who are scavenging like jackals at foreign embassies, hoping to receive support from foreign funds and governments rather than the support of their own people.”

He said the government would not let those “jackals” to provoke turmoil in Russia modelled after “orange revolutions” in some former Soviet republics.

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