Vladimir Putin is making changes in Russia's political system in response to last week's massacre. Critics charge he is moving the country towards a dictatorship.

Putin called for measures limiting the role of smaller opposition political parties, barring independent politicians from running for the national legislature, and effectively giving the president the power to appoint regional governors who are now elected. The changes are likely to be approved before the end of the year by Kremlin loyalists who control Russia's Parliament.

Opposition leaders and some political analysts responded that the changes would do little or nothing to stop terrorism, and they accused Putin of using the Beslan school raid that killed more than 330 people, half of them children, as a pretext for gaining full control over Russia's political institutions.