MOSCOW – In the wake of the Beslan massacre, President Putin yesterday announced sweeping changes to Russia’s political system that he said would help combat terrorism, changes that critics charged would only strengthen his grip on power.

Speaking at a special session of Cabinet members and regional governors, Mr. Putin also announced the creation of a new anti-terror agency to coordinate security efforts across the country.

“The organizers and perpetrators of the terror attack are aiming at the disintegration of the state, the breakup of Russia,” he said. “We need a single organization capable of not only dealing with terror attacks but also working to avert them, destroy criminals in their hideouts and, if necessary, abroad.”

In the last two weeks, Russia has suffered from a series of attacks blamed on Chechen terrorists that has killed more than 400 people.

Still, most of the changes announced yesterday had little direct link to security. Mr. Putin said he would propose to the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of Parliament, that the heads of Russia’s 89 regions and republics no longer be elected by universal suffrage, but essentially appointed by the Kremlin.

He also plans to propose introducing full proportional representation for elections to the Duma – making it next to impossible for small opposition parties to get deputies elected on independent tickets. With the pro-Putin United Russia in control of more than two-thirds of Duma seats, it is almost certain the changes will be approved.

Opposition voices lashed out at the proposals, saying Mr. Putin is using the string of recent attacks in Russia as a pretext to further consolidate his authority.

“Just imagine that after September 11, 2001, George Bush had come to the Senate and proposed that in order to catch [Osama] bin Laden, state governors should no longer be elected by direct suffrage but appointed by Washington,” one of the few independent lawmakers in the Duma, Vladimir Ryzhkov, told the Gazeta.ru online news site.

Since coming to power in 2000, Mr. Putin has reined in the independent press, curtailed the power of regional governors, and transformed Russia’s once-fiesty Parliament into a docile rubber-stamp of Kremlin policy.

Critics, including Secretary of State Powell earlier this year, have warned that Russia appears to be backsliding on democracy.

The opposition Yabloko party, once a strong voice of dissent in the Duma but now without any seats, said in a statement that Mr. Putin is destroying the final vestiges of democracy in Russia by “taking away the right of citizens to elect their representatives.”

“The last links in the system of checks and balances, which have prevented an excessive concentration of power in one pair of hands, are being abolished,” the party said. The Communist Party leader, Gennady Zyuganov, warned that Mr. Putin is trying to transform himself into a modern-day czar.

“The will of a single person is being imposed on the whole of society,” Mr. Zyuganov said. “What he is looking for is the usurping of power.”

Mr. Putin yesterday promised to create a new institution – the Public Chamber – that will be charged with strengthening public oversight of the government and law enforcement agencies. He provided no further details.

Mr. Putin, a former KGB spy, has defended his moves to consolidate power as necessary steps toward ending bureaucracy and corruption, which he says are responsible for security lapses.

“The fight against terror is our shared duty and it requires the mobilization of all the resources of the state,” he said yesterday.

Mr. Putin also said official corruption that helped terrorists – such as the issuing of false identity documents “leading to grave consequences” – would be severely punished.

Corruption is believed to have played a role in allowing 30 hostage-takers to seize a school packed with more than 1,000 children, parents, and teachers in the southern Russian town of Beslan on September 1.The crisis ended in a bloodbath as Russian security forces stormed the school while hostages ran screaming into the streets. More than 330 people, including scores of children, were killed.

That attack came the day after a female suicide bomber killed herself and 10 others outside a Moscow subway station and a week after explosions downed two Russian planes almost simultaneously, killing 90 people.

All of the attacks have been blamed on separatists from the southern Muslim republic of Chechnya, where Russian forces have fought two bloody wars against rebels. Mr. Putin has refused to negotiate with separatist leaders, saying they are part of international terrorist networks and have links with Al Qaeda.