By describing Russia’s parliamentary election as rigged, Putin said Clinton “gave a signal” to his opponents.

“They heard this signal and with the support of the U.S. State Department began their active work,” Putin said in televised remarks. He said the United States is spending “hundreds of millions” of dollars to influence Russian politics with the aim of weakening a rival nuclear power.

Putin’s tough words show the deep cracks in U.S.-Russian ties despite President Barack Obama’s efforts to “reset” relations with the Kremlin. Ahead of the election, President Dmitry Medvedev threatened to deploy missiles to target the U.S. missile shield in Europe if Washington failed to assuage Moscow’s concerns about its plans.

Clinton has repeatedly criticized Sunday’s parliamentary vote in Russia, saying “Russian voters deserve a full investigation of electoral fraud and manipulation.”

Russian protesters have taken to the streets in Moscow and St. Petersburg for three straight nights despite a heavy police presence, outraged over observers’ reports of widespread ballot box stuffing and manipulations of the vote count. This week has seen some of the biggest and most sustained protests Russia has faced in years, and police have detained hundreds of protesters.

Thousands were expected to join protests in Moscow and other cities on Saturday.

Putin’s United Russia party barely held onto its majority in parliament, with official results giving it about 50 percent of the vote, down from 64 percent four years ago. But the fraud allegations indicate that support for United Russia was even lower than that, and Russians appear to be growing weary of Putin and his party after nearly 12 years in office.

Putin was president from 2000 until 2008, when he moved into the prime minister’s office to abide by a constitutional limit on two consecutive terms. He intends to reclaim the presidency after an election in March that would give him at least six more years in power.

Putin’s return to the Kremlin still seems assured, but he clearly has been shaken by the outburst of public anger and it is not yet clear how much of a challenge it will pose to his power.

Moscow has already put about 50,000 police and 2,000 paramilitary troops on the streets, backed by water cannon.

Putin warned that the government might take an even harder line against those who try to influence Russia’s political process on behalf of a foreign government.

He accused the U.S. State Department of spending “hundreds of millions” of dollars in Russia and his government has to “work out ways to protect our sovereignty from outside interference.”

“We are the largest nuclear power,” Putin said, addressing supporters during a televised meeting. “And our partners have certain concerns and shake us so that we don’t forget who is the master of this planet, so that we remain obedient and feel that they have leverage to influence us within our own country.”

He said “especially unacceptable is the infusion of foreign money into the electoral process.”

Clinton reached out to Russia on Thursday.

“I think it’s important to recognize that we value our relations with Russia,” she said at a NATO meeting in Brussels, where she also met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “We have invested a great deal of effort on working together … and we have made progress.”

Clinton defended her criticism of the elections, saying she was expressing concerns the U.S. thought were well-founded.

Russia’s only independent election monitoring group, which is supported by grants from the United States and European governments, has come under heavy official pressure in recent weeks. The Golos website documenting violations was hacked and the group was fined the equivalent of $1,000 after prosecutors accused it of violating election law.

Putin’s attempt to rally support by blaming the United States for his troubles would find little support among ordinary Russians, said political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin.

“Even in Soviet times, it did not work,” Oreshkin said. “Now it won’t work for sure.”

Also Thursday, Russia’s top election official urged prosecutors to study photographs and video clips circulating on social networking sites that purport to show election fraud, and signaled that those who posted the materials could be punished.

If the images show genuine violations, they will be investigated, Central Election Commission chief Vladimir Churov said. But if evidence is found that the photographs and videos were “provocations” or faked, those who created, commissioned or sponsored them will be held to account, he said.

Opposition groups have called for a mass protest near the Kremlin on Saturday to demand recount of the vote. About 30,000 people have now signed up to a Facebook page on the protest.

A map circulating on the Internet shows similar protests planned for Saturday in more than 75 cities around Russia, while a page on LiveJournal lists more planned protests in 15 countries around the world.

The use of the Internet to mobilize and organize protesters in Russia is a new phenomenon.

“I used to express my opinion in my blog, in social networks, I wasn’t really politically active,” said Artyom Goryachev, a 27-year-old PR manager. “But enough is enough. I am fed up with all of this.” He said he planned to go to Saturday’s protest with friends from work.

Anton Nossik, a popular blogger and Internet expert, said it was not the Internet that energized the protesters but the brazen vote rigging that prompted many young Russians to express their discontent offline.

“They came out not because they read information (online) on where to show up for the first time, but because for the first time many people got the feeling that the time had come for that,” Nossik said.

Sam Greene, director of the Center for the Study of New Media and Society in Moscow, said this week’s protests in Moscow were a combination of online and offline social networks working together. “They’re going out to protests with people they know, with people they trust,” he said.

The Internet doesn’t create protests or a revolution, “but it certainly makes it possible for people to communicate and to learn about what’s going on around them in an environment like Russia, where the traditional media are much more closely controlled,” Greene said.

Russia’s Kremlin-controlled television networks have largely ignored the demonstrations.

Organisers pushed ahead with the presidential and parliamentary elections in the vast Central African nation on Monday despite fears that logistical delays and complaints over the process would set the scene for a bitterly contested result.

Mounoubai Madnodje, spokesman for the U.N. mission in Congo known as MONUSCO, said the United Nations was still delivering electoral materials on Tuesday to some areas which have yet to vote, including the central province of Bandundu.

“We’ve offered our helicopters to transport materials, so yes, we’re still continuing to help,” Madnodje said, adding the security situation across the country was generally calm.

President Joseph Kabila faced ten rivals, including veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi. About 18,500 people are also running for 500 seats in parliament.

The election commission said the ballot was “satisfactory”. Voting in some areas carried on into the night, while others were asked to be patient and mark their ballot on Tuesday after some ballot papers did not arrive on time.

Across the nation, voters complained that confusion over voter lists made it difficult for many to know where to vote. Tensions flared and violence was reported at many polling stations during voting, over allegations of fraud.

“Here in Kinshasa we don’t have any confidence in the process but in this polling station we have worked hard (to stop fraud),” said Henriette Kilonda, an election official at the Ecole de la Gare voting centre in Gombe, central Kinshasa.

City residents scanned initial results posted outside 18 polling stations while Kilonga and fellow officials were readying the transfer of ballot papers to compilation centres. It was too early to ascertain any voting trends and full provisional results are not due till Dec. 6.

The election commission did not say how many people were unable to vote on Monday or when they would do so, but a senior international election observer said the figure was in the hundreds of thousands.

Chaos, Violence

In counting that lasted through the night in some places, some ballot papers in the legislative vote were dozens of pages long, so officials had to flick through them looking for a single “X” marking a vote.

“We have 63,000 polling stations. If of those we have even 1,000 which cause problems, that’s manageable. For us we just want everyone to be able to vote,” election commission spokesman Matthieu Mpita said on Monday evening.

At least three people were killed when masked gunmen attacked a polling station in the copper-producing province of Katanga in the south. There were numerous reports of violence and alleged fraud elsewhere.

Anaclet Tshimbalanga, the president of TDH, a human rights group in West Kasai province, said at least 12 polling stations had been torched in the provincial capital, Kananga, after residents said they had found ballot papers already marked in favour of Kabila.

“I saw them, other observers saw them, journalists saw them, they exist,” he stated, adding delays meant voting was continuing late into the night.

The business centre of the largely pro-Tshisekedi capital, Kinshasa, was calm in the morning. Overnight, there was a heavy police presence on the streets and reports of gunfire coming from some neighbourhoods.

Highlighting the risk of the vote polarising the nation, Kazadi Nyembwe, a senior figure in Kabila’s PPRD party said its supporters had been intimidated in opposition strongholds, especially the Kasai provinces.

“Things have not gone properly. PPRD supporters weren’t even allowed to go into (polling stations) unless they agreed to voted for Tshisekedi,” he told Reuters late on Sunday.

Congo’s first post-war election was held in 2006, drawing a line under years of war and chaos and paving the way for renewed investor interest in a country rich in copper, cobalt, gold and other minerals. That vote was largely seen as free and fair.

“I voted in 2006. It was not at all difficult then,” said Murphy Mbemba, a 30-year-old artist, in Kinshasa.

“(But) I cannot find my name on any centre (this time). I don’t know where I should be voting,” she said.