|PIC1|Russia's President Vladimir Putin sent Christmas greetings to members of the Orthodox Church as they celebrated the Russian Christmas Day on Monday.

In a Christmas message released by the Kremlin, Putin said, "This festival has for centuries brought the light of faith, hope and love.

"It draws us towards primordial spiritual values uniting millions of people, values that play a special role in the history of Russia and nourish our national culture."

He later joined Christmas ceremonies during the night at a church in Veliky Ustyug, where the Russian variation of Father Christmas is believed to have his home.

Putin was a member of the KGB during the Soviet era, when the freedom of Christians to practice their faith was suppressed.

His Christmas message came a day after US presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton bluntly declared that the Russian president had no soul.

"Bush really premised so much of our foreign policy on his personal relationships with leaders, and I just don't think that's the way a great country engages in diplomacy," Clinton told voters in Hampton, New Hampshire. She was referring to a remark Bush made after his first meeting with Putin in 2001 that he "was able to get a sense of his [Putin's] soul".

Clinton continued, "This is the president that looked in the soul of Putin, and I could have told him, he was a KGB agent," Clinton said. "By definition he doesn't have a soul. I mean, this is a waste of time, right? This is nonsense, but this is the world we're living in right now."

New Hampshire holds the first presidential nominating primary in the US on Tuesday.