Putin Threatens Pro-Democracy Crackdown

(NewsCore) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin threatened Monday to launch a crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations as he gave fresh hints that he planned to return to the Kremlin as President in 2012.

Putin said that opposition protesters deserved to be beaten by police for holding banned street protests. Russia’s authorities routinely refuse permission for liberal critics of the Kremlin to hold demonstrations then brand them illegal to justify police intervention.

’If you get [permission], you go and march. If you don’t, you don’t have the right. Go without permission and you will be hit on the head with batons. That’s all there is to it,’ the former KGB hardman said in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper.

He issued the warning as opposition activists prepared to take to the streets Tuesday as part of their Strategy 31. Protesters gather on the 31st day of the month to uphold Article 31 of Russia’s Constitution, which guarantees the right to free assembly.

Police arrested more than 100 people, including the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, at last month’s rally.

Putin nominated Dmitry Medvedev to succeed him in 2008 after eight years as President because he could not run for a third successive term. Speculation is rife, however, that he intends to replace his protege.

Putin, 57, said that the 2012 election for a new six-year term ’interests me like ... I wanted to say like everyone, but in fact more than everyone else.’

He added: ’The most important thing is that these problems of 2012 don’t derail us from the path of stable development.’

Told he had already been in power a long time, Putin said: ’I only have two choices: either to watch from the bank how the waters are flowing away and how something collapses or is lost -- or to get involved. I prefer to be involved.’

Putin also accused the West of tricking Moscow after the Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe at the end of the Cold War, and cast doubt on the ’reset’ in relations with the United States under U.S. President Barack Obama.

’At time of the withdrawal ... the NATO Secretary-General promised the USSR it could be confident that NATO would not expand over its current boundaries. And where is it? I asked them about this. They have nothing to say. They deceived us in the rudest way,’ he said.

Putin said that he ’really wants to believe’ in improved relations with the U.S., but pointed to what he called a ’long-term rearming of Georgia’ as a potential flashpoint. Russia and Georgia fought a war in 2008 over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

He also attacked Obama’s plan for a revised missile defense system in Eastern Europe, asking: "Where is this `reset’? We don’t see it yet in this area.’