Several thousand Russians signed up Saturday to take part in a "walking" protest against President Vladimir Putin headed by a group of the country's best known writers, including novelist Boris Akunin.

More than 2,000 people had signed up on Facebook by Saturday afternoon to take part in a "Test Walk with Poets and Writers" on Sunday in which the writers will stroll down Moscow boulevards to a camp set up by protesters.

Russia's recently inaugurated President Vladimir Putin and French president-elect Francois Hollande have discussed plans to meet in the near future, the Kremlin said Saturday.

"Vladimir Putin and Francois Hollande continued an exchange of opinions on issues of cooperation in a constructive spirit and discussed plans of personal contacts in the near future," the Kremlin said. No concrete dates were released.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin on his election victory and the two leaders have discussed future contacts, the Kremlin said on Saturday.

"Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have expressed mutual readiness to continue the onward development of the Russian-Iranian cooperation," the Kremlin said.

Russian investigators on Thursday questioned two top protest leaders over their roles in clashes with police on the eve of Vladimir Putin's inauguration that could leave them jailed for 10 years.

The Investigative Committee said anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny and leftist radical Sergei Udaltsov -- both sentenced on Wednesday to 15 days' detention for a different protest -- would soon be questioned.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin will skip the G8 summit and ice breaker talks with President Barack Obama next week, the White House said Wednesday, raising new questions about Moscow-Washington ties.

Putin had been expected at the summit at Camp David and to hold talks with the U.S. leader in a first test of whether the "reset" policy between the Kremlin and the White House will survive his return to the presidency.

Moscow police on Tuesday detained two prominent leaders of the protest movement against newly-inaugurated President Vladimir Putin after they staged an unusual night-time sit-in close to the Kremlin.

Anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny and ultra-leftist Sergei Udaltsov were taken to a nearby police station where they were expected to be fined but later freed, their lawyer Nikolai Polozov wrote on Twitter.

Russia's newly sworn-in President Vladimir Putin on Monday proposed his Kremlin predecessor Dmitry Medvedev as the country's new prime minister under a job swap agreement first announced last year.

The lower house of parliament's speaker Sergei Naryshkin said Putin submitted Medvedev's name for confirmation shortly after taking the oath of office for a third Kremlin term.

Vladimir Putin supporters unveiled plans on Saturday to draw more than 50,000 people onto the streets of Moscow in a show of force ahead of the strongman's inauguration to a third presidential term.

Russia's current prime minister will take back the Kremlin seat he already held from 2000-2008 during a swearing-in ceremony on Monday that follows his thumping March 4 election win against only token opposition.

Russia's president-elect Vladimir Putin on Tuesday joined over 150,000 people in a Soviet-style march through Moscow to celebrate Labor Day and show off public support ahead of his inauguration.

Accompanied by kitsch brass music and surrounded by multi-colored balloons, Putin and outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev led the most extensive May Day march in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday that Russia had become a freer nation during his four-year term, citing the mass protests of recent months as evidence of change.

"Spring has come to us, both literally and figuratively. I congratulate you," Medvedev said in a live television interview, his last before he hands over the presidency to Vladimir Putin.