Tens of thousands took to the streets of Moscow Saturday for rival rallies opposing and supporting Russian strongman Vladimir Putin's political domination one month ahead of presidential polls.

Police said between 87,000 and 90,000 turned up for the pro-Putin rally in the west of the capital and put the number of protesters at the anti-Putin march to a square overlooking the Kremlin at around 23,000.

A newsreader who slipped up and said bloggers were debating whether Prime Minister Vladimir Putin should be buried has become an Internet sensation and received thousands of grateful posts in Russia.

Maria Bukhtuyeva, a newsreader from the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, made the mistake when wanting to say presidential hopeful Mikhail Prokhorov had proposed holding a referendum on whether Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin should be removed from a Red Square Mausoleum and buried.

North Korean nuclear talks could restart by the summer, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Japan's NHK television in a Saturday interview whose transcript was released by the ministry on Sunday.

"It is absolutely realistic to do this not just this year but in the first half of the year, concentrating on the main task of ensuring the Korean peninsula's non-nuclear status," Lavrov said.

Thousands of cars filled Moscow's ring road Sunday in a protest demanding free elections and slamming Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's bid to regain his Kremlin job in March polls.

Some 3,000 cars decked with white ribbons and balloons -- the color of the anti-Putin movement -- joined the protest, according to organizers, while police said they numbered only 300.

Around 15,000 people Saturday thronged a city in the Russian Urals in rally organized by labor groups to show mass working class support for Vladimir Putin's bid for a new Kremlin term, police said.

The rally in Yekaterinburg appeared to be a move by the authorities and trade unions to show Putin retains broad workers' support after the mass protests against his rule mainly attended by the Moscow middle class.

Iran has no long-range missiles, a Russian defense official said Tuesday in Moscow's first response to a series of tests conducted by Tehran near the vital Strait of Hormuz oil supply route.

"Iran does not have the technology to create intermediate or long-range inter-continental ballistic missiles," defense ministry spokesman Vadim Koval told the Interfax news agency.

Russian riot police arrested dozens of people on Saturday in Moscow and Saint Petersburg who tried to stage unsanctioned New Year's Eve protests against 12 years of Vladimir Putin's dominant rule.

The show of police force marked the first time the authorities had cracked down on members of the Russian opposition since allowing two massive rallies on December 10 and December 24.

Only one cinema in Moscow has agreed to screen the Russian premiere next month of a documentary on the jailed Yukos boss and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, distributors told Agence France Presse on Tuesday.

"Just one cinema in Moscow has agreed to release 'Khodorkovsky'. All the others have refused to sign a contract with us," said a spokeswoman for the Kinoclub distributors, Nadezhda Smirnova.

The United States on Thursday disagreed with Russia's assessment that attacks by renegade Syrian troops risked plunging Syria into civil war, blaming the regime in Damascus for the violence.

"We think that's an incorrect assessment," U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner told reporters after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made the assessment.

Catherine Ashton, the European Union's foreign affairs chief, said Thursday that Syria's President Bashar al-Assad should step aside amid intensifying pressure on his authorities to end violence.

"It's time for President Assad to stand down," Ashton said following talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.