Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who is leading in the vote count after Sunday's presidential election, pledged early Monday to fulfill all his campaign promises.
“Everything my colleagues and I had been talking about, it is all doable and will be fulfilled,” Putin said, while meeting his supporters in his campaign headquarters in Moscow City Hall.
Putin, who has so far garnered over 60 percent of the vote and is set to return to the Kremlin as president for the third time, repeatedly promised massive state support to various sectors of the Russian economy and strong support for social programs.
Speaking early Monday morning to the workers of the Urals-based Uralvagonzavod machinebuilding plant and Russia’s biggest tank-maker, Putin praised them for their support of his presidential bid. In a December televised QA session with Putin, shortly after massive protests against alleged violations in favor of Putin’s United Russia party at the December parliamentary elections rocked Moscow, one plant official suggested that his peers come to Moscow and deal with Putin’s critics. The opposition rallies still continued then, drawing tens of thousands in the Russian capital.
“You demonstrated what Russian people are, Russian working people – workers, engineers. You demonstrated that you're a head above any loafer, any blabbermouth,” Putin said. “This was the biggest present for me.”
Putin is not a man known for showing his emotions, and Russians are more accustomed to seeing him as a rugged stoic. Yet in his appearances tonight, Putin became softer, even though many think that he will bring a harder line back to Russian politics.
Others at the event maintained that the opposition movement that has gripped Russia in the past months will not be lost with Putin's reelection, and that he will follow a path of reform, and not revert back to the hardline policies of his previous terms.
When Putin finally emerged to speak with campaign staff and journalists well after midnight, he did not dawdle. After gladhanding his way through the crowd, he thanked the head of his campaign team, Stanislav Govorukhin. Then, for his last act of the night, he channeled a politically charged speech he gave at Luzhniki Stadium last month where he quoted Lermontev and recited another poem. "I don't need heaven, just give me my native land," he said and then he disappeared for the night.
