MOSCOW, June 23 (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday dismissed concerns that the economic crisis could provoke any widespread domestic unrest and said companies and local officials were working to prevent tensions rising over unemployment.
"We do not expect any wide-scale social protests," First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov told Reuters financial television in an interview. "In several places people have expressed their discontent."
Russia is entering the worst recession in at least a decade and unemployment has soared to 7.5 million in the wake of the global financial crisis.
Though public expressions of discontent are still rare, workers in some regional towns have protested against unemployment and the idling of factories.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin this month reprimanded one of Russia's most powerful oligarchs for failing workers in one crisis-hit town in the forests of northern Russia.
Putin's visit to Pikalyovo in the Leningrad region came after workers in the town blocked a motorway and called on the authorities to intervene.
"If you look at the situations where there have been such cases, as a rule they are the result of silliness," said Shuvalov.
Problems resulted "from the inability to resolve situations in time, where management are unable to agree with shareholders or with nearby enterprises, as was the case in the Leningrad Region," he said.
Russia's leaders say they will do everything to ensure the stability which Putin prided himself on achieving while Kremlin chief between 2000 and 2008. (Additional reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov, Anastasia Onegina, Alexei Kalmykov, Darya Korsunskaya and Melissa Akin, editing by Mark Trevelyan)