By Michael Stott and Christian Lowe

Rising unemployment and economic crisis in Russia will force Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev from power by 2012, an opposition leader predicted on Tuesday.

"I believe this regime will not see 2012. It is probable it will not see out 2010. Things are unfolding too fast," Garry Kasparov, a former world chess champion who has led a crusade against Kremlin policies, told Reuters in an interview.

"This structure will collapse."

Shortly after Kasparov spoke, Medvedev said the global financial crisis had spread to Russia's real economy and "every industry is affected in its own way." He said the many sectors that needed state aid would receive it.

Kasparov, who has just co-founded a new opposition movement called Solidarity, predicted big street protests when the crisis hits jobs, particularly those of military officers whom the government plans to sack as part of an army shake-up.

"In America and the U.K., governments are trying to solve the problems of the poor at the expense of the rich," Kasparov said in the interview in his Soviet-era Moscow flat.

"In Russia it is the other way round. So in Russia, the oligarchs are being saved ... and the businesses of Putin's friends are being saved, at the expense of Russian taxpayers."

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, declined comment but noted that Kasparov had never won elected office and "unfortunately he has been unable to take any place at all in politics or on the margins of politics."

Medvedev has told police to stamp out any social unrest or crime arising from the financial crisis.

He has also proposed extending the presidential term by two years and a constitutional change is being rushed through parliament which some political analysts say could help Putin return for a third term as president.

EARLY ELECTIONS?

Kasparov said he anticipated early elections as Putin "is scared by the crisis and wants to go back to the Kremlin."

"Now ... it's about saving your skin. That's why I believe they will soon move into a new election phase," he said.

After eight years as president, Putin last year picked Medvedev as his preferred successor. Medvedev was elected for a four-year term as president in March.

A collapse in the prices of Russia's main exports, oil and metals, has put the rouble under pressure since then and created holes in state budgets. A five-day war with Georgia in August scared off foreign investors and Russian banks are not passing on government rescue cash to borrowers.

Official figures put unemployment at 5.3 percent but economists say it will rise as the effect of lay-offs spread.

"Even in the center of Moscow you already have a lot of troubling signs of the credit crunch," Kasparov said, citing slowing construction activity and half-empty restaurants.

"... what we are hearing from rural areas, from outside Moscow, the news is even more troubling."

State-controlled television, the main source of news for most Russians, has focused on the impact of the financial crisis on the United States, which Medvedev blames for the turmoil.

Kasparov criticized the Kremlin's failure to invest the vast wealth generated by a 10-year economic boom in Russia.

Instead, he said, money was skimmed off by corrupt officials and spent overseas. Fights would break out among the ruling elite for scarce resources as state coffers emptied, he said.

(Editing by Timothy Heritage)

URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSTRE4AH5XQ20081118