Putin's foes go online to elect new leaders

But hacking scuppered voting in the early hours while nearly a dozen police vans surrounded the one site in Moscow where Putin's foes could get help using computers to vote — a security measure they saw as a form of pressure.

More than 200 candidates fielded by Russia's splintered protest movement — from ex-chess king Garry Kasparov to regular students and activists — are vying for one of 45 seats on the so-called Coordinating Committee.

Internet voting was due to have been conducted nationally on the cvk2012.org website after more than 165,000 people registered online.

But the site became unresponsive as soon as elections began in Moscow at 8 a.m. (0400 GMT) and only resumed periodic service hours later.

Organizers said their site was the victim of a distributed denial of service attack (DdoS) attack that opposition forces have blamed in the past on pro-Kremlin youth groups that wage Internet war against the opposition.

“Oh how they do love to fear elections,” top opposition leader Alexei Navalny tweeted in reference to the Russian authorities and their supporters.

The highly symbolic poll's sole purpose is to inject new energy into a protest movement that has lost steam since last winter when it appeared to pose the first serious challenge to Putin's 13-year rule.

A handful of special polling stations with computers for those who lacked access were also set up in Moscow and a few other large cities that have been the focus of most opposition activity in recent months.

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