Supporters of the Yabloka party’s Grigory Yavlinskiy, who was denied registration as a presidential candidate, and Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, leader of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party who is standing as a candidate against Putin rallied on Pushkin Square at the centre of Moscow with their leaders.

Across town at Poklonnaya Gora an estimated 80,000 pro-Putin demonstrators also demonstrated peacefully in favour of Putin’s leadership.

Nine thousand police ensured the rallies were all peaceful.

Neither a head broken, nor apparently, a truncheon raised in anger.

What’s happened to Russia?

Less than 15 years ago half a million miners went on strike demanding their unpaid wages; wailing babushkas paraded under red banners on Revolution Square protesting they could not live on their pensions and young couples refused to have babies because the future was so uncertain.

With poverty halved, life expectancy increased by 1.5 years in a year and a new vibrancy in everything from construction of transport infrastructure to development of financial markets, Russia today is a different country and nation from the one that struggled under Yeltsin’s chaotic rule.

The man who brought about that change is Vladimir Putin and the fact that such peaceful protests could take place spurred on by Twitter and Facebook are due to the changes he has wrought in Russia over the last twelve years.

He is not perfect, just a man, not a god. He is said to be cold, clinical and calculating but he has also shown flashes of anger and has demonstrated a barrack-room vocabulary.

While he has a backbone of steel and can be uncompromising he is also capable of great strategic and tactical flexibility and an instinct for what is practical.

BSR contributor Gordon Hahn catalogues what he calls the “errors” of Putinism but I feel that artricle is out of date and does not acknowledge the awesome depth that Putin has gone to in 20,000 words of articles to date, to explain his strategy on developing the economy and democracy, confronting nationalism and sectarian threats as well as reviewing the accomplishments of his regime since he became acting president at the turn of the Century.

The articles together with his bravura performance at last week’s Russia Forum financial conference show a man who is cool and confidant of his future over the next six years.

He has shown remarkable flexibility and responsiveness to the criticism and protests that erupted in December. Elections rigged by ballot stuffing? Two cameras are being installed in each of the 96,000 polling stations across Russia which will stream video over the internet of the translucent ballot boxes and the counting tables.

Corruption is systemic! Acknowledging this Putin in his article on democracy in today’s Kommersant newspaper proposed concrete solutions.

The proof of the genuine innovations proposed by the prime minister will be in their implementation. The man deserves the chance to put his proposals into action and whosoever he can co-opt to implement his plans for ensuring greater democracy, increased investment competitiveness and a vastly improved business environment should be welcomed.

Some names that Putin doubtless has scribbled on a piece of paper include Yavlinsky, a theoretician; Kudrin, a technocrat and Prokhorov a successful businessman who thinks outside the box. Finding a role for them alongside his trusted lawyer protégé, Medvedev, will be a challenge for the enigmatic Putin.