Protesters rally across Russia on Putin's birthday

MOSCOW -- In a challenge to President Vladimir Putin on his 65th birthday, protesters rallied across Russia on Saturday, heeding opposition leader Alexei Navalny's call to pressure authorities into letting him enter the presidential race.

Police allowed demonstrators in Moscow to rally near the Kremlin in an apparent desire to avoid marring Putin's birthday with a crackdown. A bigger rally in St. Petersburg, Putin's hometown, was disbanded by police after protesters blocked traffic and attempted to break through police cordons.

The rallies came as Navalny himself is serving a 20-day jail term for calling for an earlier unsanctioned protest.

In Moscow, several hundred protesters, most of them students, gathered on downtown Pushkinskaya Square, waving Russian flags and chanting "Russia will be free!" and "Let Navalny run!" Police warned them the rally wasn't sanctioned and urged them to disperse, but let the protest continue for hours without trying to break it up.

Mostly teenage protesters later walked down Moscow's Tverskaya Street toward the Kremlin, shouting "Putin, go away!" and "Future without Putin!" Police lines blocked them from approaching Red Square and they turned back.

"We battle for Russia to be free from Putinism. Because the power we have now is feudal, we have no freedom of speech, no freedom of choice," said protester Stepan Fesov.

The authorities' decision to refrain from breaking up the Moscow protest contrasted with a more forceful response to previous Moscow rallies called by Navalny, when police detained more than 1,000 demonstrators.

After the St. Petersburg march was disbanded, several hundred protesters continued rallying for hours at the downtown Vosstaniya Square as police stood by without intervening.

"Putin has been in charge since I was born," said Dmitry Samokhin, an 18-year-old protester in St. Petersburg. "The country is mired in stagnation and I want to see changes."

Navalny's headquarters called protests in 80 cities. Most were not sanctioned by authorities, but police largely refrained from dispersing the rallies that drew from a few dozen to a few hundred people.

Navalny has declared his intention to run for president in the March 2018 election, even though a criminal conviction he calls politically motivated bars him from running. The 41-year-old anti-corruption crusader has organized waves of protests this year, raising the pressure on the Kremlin.

Putin hasn't announced whether he would seek re-election, but he's widely expected to run. With his current approval ratings topping 80 percent, he is set to easily win another six-year term in a race against torpid veterans of past election campaigns.

Navalny argues the high level of support for Putin comes from the lack of real political competition and urged supporters to help him get registered.