Demonstrators in Moscow held a poster of Vladimir Putin draped in a condom after he compared the protest symbol of a white ribbon to a sheath Thousands of people have gathered in central Moscow to protest against allegedly rigged parliamentary polls.
Protest leader Alexei Navalny told the crowd to loud applause that Russians would no longer tolerate corruption."I see enough people here to take the Kremlin and [Government House] right now but we are peaceful people and won't do that just yet," he said.
A sea of demonstrators stretched along Sakharov Avenue, a few miles from the Kremlin, in sub-zero temperatures.
Rallies are taking place across Russia, with the first big protest in the far eastern city of Vladivostok.
In the capital, Moscow, organisers expect some 50,000 people to gather for speeches by opposition figures.
President Dmitry Medvedev announced political reforms this week, but many demonstrators say it is not enough.
They are demanding a re-run of the poll, which was won by the party of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin - but with a much smaller share of the overall vote.
With the temperature a few degrees below zero, the Moscow mayor's office was reportedly laying on tea and simple hot food from field kitchens.
Security is tight in the city, with 40 busloads of riot police lined up along the avenue, according to Russian media.
At one point, police manning metal detectors briefly closed access to the avenue, Interfax news agency reports.
'We're the power ' At least 28,000 people have turned out in Moscow, Russian interior ministry spokesman Valery Gribakin told Russian news agencies.
A police official who spoke to AFP news agency said there was space for 50,000 on the avenue.
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Alexei Navalny Protest leaderWe are peaceful people but we can't put with this forever”
In Moscow, protesters clutched white balloons and banners with the slogan "For Free Elections" as the rally began.
This is a huge, mass movement of Muscovites, the BBC's Daniel Sandford reports from the scene.Mr Navalny, a prominent anti-corruption blogger who was jailed for 15 days over a street protest just after the elections, condemned Russia's leaders as "swindlers and thieves".
He listed victims of injustice including imprisoned former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in custody.
"Who's the power here?" he shouted to cries of "We are" from the crowd.
"We are peaceful people but we can't put with this forever."
Saturday's rally in Moscow - authorised by the authorities - was organised by a coalition of opposition forces.
The 22 speakers expected in Moscow included Mr Putin's presidential challenger Mikhail Prokhorov and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Apart from politicians, the eclectic line-up included rock musician Yuri Shevchuk, speaking by video link, detective fiction writer Boris Akunin, Urals anti-heroin campaigner Yevgeny Roizman and satirist Viktor Shenderovich.
Organisers said as many as 50,000 people rallied on 10 December, in what was the biggest anti-government protest since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The opposition has been encouraged by that success, forcing the Kremlin on the backfoot.
On Thursday, Mr Medvedev proposed to hold direct elections of regional governors and simplify the procedure for registering political parties, but protesters say the concessions do not go far enough, the BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Moscow says.
However, one of the main problems for the opposition is that there is no single leader able to unite it, our correspondent adds.
'Flawed elections' According to the official results of the elections to Russia's Duma, the ruling United Russia party saw its share of the vote fall from 64% to 49%, though it remains easily the biggest party.
But there is a widespread view, fuelled by mobile phone videos and accounts on internet social networking sites, that there was wholesale election fraud and that Mr Putin's party cheated its way to victory.
The Kremlin denies the claim.
In the Pacific port of Vladivostok, demonstrators carried posters calling for Mr Putin to be put on trial and regional MP Artyom Samsonov said the election results should be cancelled
Rallies against ballot-rigging were reported across Russia's time zones on Saturday by Interfax
- In the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, a rally of between 800 and 1,500 people passed off peacefully
- About 100 people braved a frost of -15C in Orenburg on the border with Kazakhstan
- About 500 people rallied in Chelyabinsk in the southern Urals under the slogan "These elections were a farce! We want honest elections"
- Several arrests were made at a rally in St Petersburg, Vladimir Putin's home city
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