MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin may not like what he sees in Ukraine, but he can be confident a "people power" revolution is unlikely to spread to Russia despite political similarities with its neighbour, analysts say.

The turmoil in Ukraine just a year after a peaceful coup in Georgia, on Russia's southern rim, is bound to have some repercussions on its political house however, they say.

What has alarmed the Kremlin about events in the two ex-Soviet states is that the mass protests, triggered by rigged elections, are fundamentally directed at the same political model as espoused by Putin's Russia.

"Much of the irritation demonstrated by our leaders comes from the fear that the collapse of the model of 'managed democracy' in the post-Soviet space would create a precedent," liberal analyst Andrei Pyontkovsky said.

In essence, this model in Russia adds up to strong central control over political parties, parliament and media. After the victory of Georgia's Western-leaning Mikhail Saakashvili in December last year, Moscow invested much effort to prevent a repetition of a similar scenario in Ukraine, Russia's closest ally by history and culture.

These efforts culminated in Putin himself publicly plumping for the establishment candidate in the Nov 21 election, that subsequently turned out to have been fiddled.

But, though events in Ukraine have not developed the way Moscow would have liked, analysts do not see any prospect of an "orange revolution" in Russia that could shake the Kremlin-dominated political structure.

An absence of public discontent and of a strong political opposition take away two vital ingredients for such upheavals, Lilia Shevtsova of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said.

Nor is there any sign of any break-down of consensus within the national elite that in Russia combines powerful business forces, policy-makers and top layers of the bureaucracy, that includes the military and security forces.

PUTIN POPULARITY: As leaders, Georgia's Eduard Shevardnadze and Ukraine's Leonid Kuchma were largely discredited. Putin, by contrast, remains by far the most popular politician in Russia and the country itself enjoys relative stability and strong economic growth after a decade of post-Soviet political upheaval.