Putin secures fifth term as Russian president

PanARMENIAN.Net - The polls are now closed across Russia, but the outcome was never in doubt: Russian President Vladimir Putin has secured a fifth term in office through a dubious national plebiscite.

In an address to the Russian people on the eve of the election, Putin urged voters to cast ballots as a show of national unity, CNN reports.

“I am convinced that you understand what a difficult period our country is going through now, what difficult challenges we face in almost all spheres,” he said. “And in order to continue to respond to them with dignity and successfully overcome difficulties, we continue to need to be united and self-confident.”

The people of Russia, Putin added, “are one big family!”

That’s a message Putin repeated after polls closed. In an appearance with a crowd of youthful campaign activists wearing shirts with a logo reading “Putin Russia Victory,” the Russian president said Russians “are all one team, all [the] Russian citizens that came to the polls to vote.”

But Putin also alluded vaguely to “a lot of tasks ahead of us” following his re-election.

In the run-up to the vote, Putin had been coy about what those tasks might be exactly if he secured a fifth presidential term.

In a generally anodyne interview with government propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov, Putin evaded speculation about whether, for instance, a government shake-up might be expected after the election.

Asked if the government of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin might survive post-election, Putin merely said, “We need to talk about this after the elections, after the votes are counted. It seems to me that now this is simply incorrect. But on the whole, the government is working … quite satisfactorily.”