TODAY: Thousands gather for anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow and St Petersburg; Prokhorov to found new party; assassins’ plot to kill Putin foiled; latest Putin article warns against military intervention in Iran; Khodorkovsky urges voters to reject Putin at ballot; Tuva earthquake. 

As planned, thousands of anti-government protesters formed a 16-km ‘White Ring’ human chain around the Garden Ring in central Moscow (police estimate 11,000 activists, organisers puts the number at 34,000) RFE/RL has images.  Thousands also marched in St. Petersburg to call for fair elections.  The latest poll from the Levada Center puts Putin’s share of Sunday’s vote at 66%, and Gennady Zyuganov’s share (the second highest) at 15%.  United Russia’s poll numbers have risen 10% since hitting an all-time low in December.  Mikhail Prokhorov has promised that he will found his own, as yet unnamed, political party after the elections – the website of which apparently already has over 20,000 users.  Prokhorov apparently has the lion’s share of Moscow’s ‘caffeine electorate’.  A group of would-be assassins, who reportedly planned to kill Prime Minister Vladimir Putin after the presidential elections this Sunday, have been arrested in Odessa.  The group had aimed to plant mines on a Moscow avenue, according to the BBC.