Vladimir V. Putin was sworn in for his fifth term as president Tuesday in a ceremony filled with pomp and a televised church service, as the Russian leader once again attempted to present his invasion of Ukraine as a religiously just mission that is part of “our 1,000 years of history.”
Putin took the presidential oath (swearing to “respect and safeguard the rights and freedoms of man and citizen”) with his hand on a red-bound copy of Russia’s constitution, the 1993 document that guarantees many of the democratic rights he has passed much of his 25 years of government going backwards.
Putin claimed his fifth term in March in a formal election that Western nations dismissed as a sham. If he serves out the full six years of his new term, he will become the longest-serving Russian leader since Empress Catherine the Great in the 19th century.
“Together we will be victorious!” Putin said at the end of a speech after taking the oath of office in the Kremlin’s gilded St. Andrew’s Hall.
State television later showed a service inside the Kremlin’s Annunciation Cathedral led by Patriarch Kirill I, head of the Russian Orthodox Church. He blessed Putin as the president stood, watching, occasionally bowing and crossing himself, a scene that underscored the Kremlin’s intensifying efforts to give a religious sheen to Putin’s rule.
“The head of state must sometimes make fateful and fearful decisions,” the patriarch said, in what appeared to be an attempt to present Putin’s invasion as justified before God. “And if that decision is not made, the consequences can be extremely dangerous for the people and the State. But these decisions are almost always associated with the victims.”
Putin offered no new policy details in his speech, although analysts expect him to make some changes to the makeup of his government later this week. He also said nothing about the tactical nuclear weapons exercises his military announced Monday, a move that underscored Putin’s continued attempts to pressure the West to relent on its support for Ukraine.
“We do not reject dialogue with Western states,” Putin said in his speech, repeating his call for talks that many critics see as tantamount to a demand for capitulation by the West and Ukraine.
“I will repeat that talks, including on issues of strategic stability, are possible,” he added, referring to arms control negotiations with the United States that have been stalled since Russia launched its invasion more than two years ago. “But only under equal conditions, respecting the interests of each one.”
Isolated from the West more than two years since he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and under indictment by the International Criminal Court, Putin is projecting power domestically that appears stronger than ever.
“Our president has the highest powers, more than the American president and even the Russian tsar,” Gennady A. Zyuganov, leader of Russia’s Communist Party, said as he arrived at the ceremony in the Kremlin. “A lot depends on him.”
More than 2,000 government officials, prominent supporters and loyal administrators who are part of Russian institutions in occupied Ukraine gathered to witness the carefully organized inauguration.
Putin’s planned election in March gave him more than 87 percent of the vote, according to Russian election officials, with nearly 80 percent turnout.
As his supporters gathered, they all shared a message that demonstrated Putin’s iron grip on their loyalty: that he would keep Russia stable, strong and peaceful.
Among the first to arrive was American actor Steven Seagal, who said of Russia’s future that “with President Putin, it will be the best.”
Putin took the brief oath alongside Valery Zorkin, the president of the Constitutional Court, a body that has staunchly defended Putin’s rollback of democratic rights.
Almost all known opposition politicians have been jailed. The most prominent, Aleksei A. Navalny, died in a penal colony in the Arctic Circle in February.
His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, condemned Putin’s inauguration on Tuesday in a video posted to YouTube on Tuesday morning.
“Our country is being run by a liar, a thief and a murderer,” said Navalnaya, who lives outside Russia. “But this will definitely come to an end.”
As in the past, the tightly scripted state television broadcast fused ceremonial pageantry and a depiction of Putin as a humble, hard-working leader. Before the ceremony, Putin was shown getting up from his desk, casually flipping through a sheaf of papers, walking down long, narrow hallways, past uniformed guards and into a Russian-made limousine that took him through the Kremlin grounds.
Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.