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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's spokesman said on Monday the results of contested parliamentary polls will stand despite street protests and a probe by the election authorities.

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

Peskov argued that, even if hypothetically the votes were recognized and contested in court, it still can not in any way affect the question of the vote's legitimacy or the overall results.

His comments followed an order from President Dmitry Medvedev for election officials to lookinto reports of vote-fixing after the ruling party's narrow victory sparked the largest protest rallies since the 1990s.

Saturday's demonstrations near the Kremlin saw more than 50,000 people defying the outcome of Dec 4 elections that were widely seen as a litmus test for Putin's planned return to the presidency next year.

The rallies have put Putin under political pressure and suggested that his path back to the Kremlin in March elections may be thornier than originally thought.

Putin himself stayed out of the public spotlight over the weekend and was scheduled on Monday to officially launch a new reactor at a nuclear power station in the central Russia.

But Medvedev on Sunday responded to the demonstrations by announcing the launch of an inquiry into the violation reports.

Medvedev publicly wrote on his Facebook page that he disagreed with the slogans and declarations made at the meetings and announced that he had issued instructions to check all polling station reports about (failures) to follow election laws.

Medvedev's conciliatory remarks were met by a flood of ridicule on his Facebook page and quickly rejected as insufficient by both the liberal opposition and the Communist Party, the new parliament's second-largest bloc.

Rally organizers have already promised to return to the same Moscow square en masse on Dec 24 and possibly hold smaller rallies at various locations before then.

A coalition of liberal and nationalist groups on Monday asked the Moscow mayor's office to sanction the Dec 24 rally for up to 50,000 people just steps away from the Kremlin.

City authorities had until the middle of the week to respond.

Pro-Kremlin youth groups meanwhile were due on Monday to stage their own mass gathering in central Moscow under the slogan "Glory to Russia!"

In previous gatherings, Russian youth groups have demonstrated public support for Kremlin rule and the United Russia party that retained a narrow majority in parliament.

（中國日報網(wǎng)英語點津 Rosy 編輯）

About the broadcaster:

Emily Cheng is an editor at China Daily. She was born in Sydney, Australia and graduated from the University of Sydney with a degree in Media, English Literature and Politics. She has worked in the media industry since starting university and this is the third time she has settled abroad - she interned with a magazine in Hong Kong 2007 and studied at the University of Leeds in 2009.