Former chess champion Garry Kasparov has hailed as a success an Internet petition calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Kasparov, who leads The Other Russia opposition coalition, said Friday that the petition would help turn widespread discontent with Putin's rule into large-scale demonstrations demanding that he step down.
About 19,000 signatures have been registered in 16 days on the web site, and organizers say at least that many are backlogged as each signatory is manually checked.
(AP)