Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin defended his controversial plan to seek a third mandate as president, saying that Russia needs stability and is still at risk of a Soviet-style collapse.

Speaking in televised remarks in a rare acknowledgment of public discontent, Putin said his political opponents claimed that "everything is so bad, that it could not get worse."

"Saying that things cannot get worse, I would be careful. It's enough to take two or three wrong steps and everything that was before could overwhelm us so quickly that we would not even have time to look around."

"Everything here is tacked together, both in politics and in the economy," Putin said in a startling admission of the fragility of the stability he prides himself on bringing to Russia since coming to power in 1999.

"We let the (Soviet) state collapse" in 1991, he said on prime-time television. "Things got as far as - we have to say it directly - civil war."

"The entire Caucasus was drenched in blood," he said, noting the continuing unrest in the troubled North Caucasus and countrywide problems "with crime and terrorism", The Calgary Herald reported.