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Ahead of September's parliamentary elections, state officials and Russian state media are portraying Mr Putin as the victim of a Western conspiracy to undermine him. At the weekend, the main weekly television news programme accused Russia's highest profile opposition figure - Alexei Navalny - of being a paid agent of the Western intelligence agencies. Mr Navalny has described the allegations as "pure fantasy". But where is Russia's increasingly muted opposition? Four years ago, the popular writer - Boris Akunin - was at Alexei Navalny's side during the large anti-Putin demonstrations which followed Russia's last parliamentary vote. Photo credit: Asia House
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