Protests won’t alter Russia vote result: Putin aide

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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said Monday the results of Russia’s contested parliamentary polls will stand despite massive 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 told AFP in a telephone interview.

“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,” Peskov said.

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