Kremlin aide quits saying Russia no longer free

An outspoken aide to President Vladimir Putin resigned yesterday, saying he did not want to work for a state that had ended democracy and basic freedom.

Andrei Illarionov, who was stripped of many of his duties a year ago after he called the assault on oil company Yukos "the scam of the year", was one of the few independent voices in an increasingly monolithic Kremlin establishment.

In potentially embarrassing remarks for Mr Putin as Russia prepares to take over the presidency of the G8 club of free-market democracies on Sunday, he told reporters: "It is one thing to work in a country that is partly free. It is another thing when the political system has changed, and the country has stopped being free and democratic".

"I did not sign a contract with such a state, and therefore it is absolutely impossible to remain in this post."

Mr Illarionov was best known in the west for his fierce opposition to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which he compared to an "economic Auschwitz".

But he is also a respected economist who, until last January, headed Russia's team at the G8 group of industrialised nations.

But his liberal views were increasingly at odds with the Kremlin's move to centralise all aspects of Russian life through bringing companies back under state control, while squeezing critics out of parliament and the media.

"Up to now, while there was the possibility of doing something, including speaking out, I thought it was important to remain in this post. Until not long ago no one put any limits on me expressing my point of view," he said.

"Now the situation has changed." Many rights activists say Mr Putin has undermined almost all aspects of the Russian state that prevented the Kremlin asserting full control.

His administration has trimmed the powers of the over-mighty businessmen that plagued 1990s Russia - most notably, in the battle against oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was jailed and whose Yukos oil firm was broken up.

During Mr Putin's almost six years in the Kremlin, independent media has also largely disappeared, while parliament and regional governors have been reduced to subservient bodies answerable to the Kremlin.

Yesterday, the Federation Council upper house of parliament approved a bill that will introduce tight controls on non-governmental organisations - a sphere of Russian life seen by activists as the last outside Kremlin control.