Putin says Russians do not want Ukraine-style 'coup'

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said Russians "do not want and will not stand for" a Ukraine-style coup as he responded to a question from a rival presidential candidate at his annual press conference.

"Do you want us to have coup attempts here? We've already been through all that. You want to go back to that? I am sure that the overwhelming majority of Russian citizens do not want this and will not stand for it," he told liberal journalist Ksenia Sobchak, who announced in October she would run in next year's presidential elections.

"We don't want a second edition of today's Ukraine for Russia, do we?" asked Putin, referring to the pro-Western 2014 "Maidan" uprisings that culminated in the ouster of Ukraine's pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.

"We won't let it happen."

Putin was responding to a question from Sobchak about opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has spent the last year gathering support for a Kremlin bid.

Navalny is ineligible to stand due to a fraud conviction in a case seen by supporters as politically motivated.

As usual, Putin did not refer to Navalny by name, instead referring to "those personages you mentioned."

He likened him to former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, a hated figure in Russia, who is now under investigation in Ukraine after falling out with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.