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MOSCA – We cannot speak of “defection”, because he had long been a leader of the opposition, but he is another excellent defector: even Mikhail Kasjanov, who was the first prime minister to join Vladimir Putin as new president from 2000 to 2004, has left Russia. “But I hope not for long”, he wrote to theAfp the 64-year-old who is now the co-president of Parnas, the People’s Freedom Party, which has not been represented in the Duma – the lower house of the Russian parliament – since 2003.