Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary, took a softer tone on Monday, saying that the president-elect "never excluded dialogue with the opposition from his political agenda and from his everyday work, and has kept contact to date".

"There is no doubt this will continue If (the opposition) comes up with a constructive stance, which would attribute to the common cause, naturally, he will be ready for dialogue with anyone," he said.

The opposition has made no concrete proposals in their rallies so far, although a senior government adviser said the protests may shift to the regional level and refocus on local agendas.

"We see a lot of evidence, both in Moscow and outside, that this may happen They're easily organized around different projects - say, addressing the traffic jams in Moscow. It's very easy to get them organized around this issue, because everybody suffers from this," said Mikhail Dmitriev, president of Moscow-based think tank Center for Strategic Research.

Putin, incidentally, has promised to address many such issues during his campaign. Early on Monday, he told his supporters he would fulfill these electoral promises.

"Everything my colleagues and I had been talking about, it is all doable and will be fulfilled," he said.

The 59-year-old was earlier quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying he hopes the changes can take place in a "calm, evolutionary way, in harmony between the ruling elites and the citizens".

And on Friday, he urged all Russians to work "smoothly and constructively, without shocks or revolutions". The "shocks" are an apparent reference to the "shock therapy" engineered by his predecessor Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, which he said destroyed social justice in the wave of privatization.

Observers say Russia is in a profound, irreversible transition toward a more modern form of governance.

"This is a course of transition. You can't just keep still in this spot. You should move ahead. You can't move back," Dmitriev said.

Mikhail Vinogradov, head of the Saint Petersburg Politics Foundation, said delegitimizing Putin is possibly Zyuganov, Prokhorov and the opposition's best shot in influencing the state of affairs.

The more radical opposition, though, will "try to escalate the situation, provocations are possible, so the authorities should not relax," he said.

Those who voted for Putin may not really approve of his old policies, Yuri Krupnov, chairman of the Movement of Development and Supervisory Board of Russia's Institute of Demography, Immigration, and Regional Development, said in a video meeting with reporters on Monday.

But they would rather choose Putin to improve government efficiency because they disagree with what the opposition has done, he said.

Krupnov urged the new government to adopt reform.