MOSCOW—Vladimir Putin claimed victory in Sunday's presidential election, calling the vote a rebuke of the biggest anti-Kremlin protests ...
But bitter disputes over the fairness of the closely monitored vote showed his victory isn't likely to mute a rising middle-class revolt against his 12 years of autocratic rule.
How Mr. Putin handles demands for greater openness and political competition—and whether the movement maintains momentum—will determine his success or failure over Russia's growing political, economic and foreign policy challenges during his six-year term.
Preliminary results based on reports from 80% of precincts showed Mr. Putin with 65% of the vote in a field carefully screened to eliminate serious rivalry. That was higher than exit polls, which put his likely result at 58-59% of the vote over four other candidates.
"We have won in an open and fair fight," Mr. Putin declared at a celebration in Manezh Square near the Kremlin. "We have shown that our people can easily tell apart the desire for novelty and renewal from political provocations that have only goal in mind—to break up the Russian state and to usurp power."
"I promised you we would win," he told tens of thousands of supporters, who chanted "Putin! Putin!" during his brief speech.
His words were unlikely to dispel questions over whether Mr. Putin has the broad support needed to claim legitimacy for a regime he has led since 1999 as president or prime minister.
"It's not an election," said Alexei Navalnyi, the anti-corruption blogger and activist who has led the recent mass protests. "Putin had a chance to make at least the counting fair, but he didn't. Tomorrow we'll wake up in a country where a large chunk of the society doesn't see Mr. Putin as a legitimate president."
Allegations of fraud in the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections triggered the biggest anti-government demonstrations since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Tens of thousands of protestors, many from the previously apolitical middle class that has grown during the relative prosperity of Mr. Putin's years in power, have taken to the streets to demand fair elections and call on Mr. Putin to step down.
The loosely organized protest movement now faces a test of its ability to keep up the pressure, starting with a Monday evening rally in downtown Moscow.
Authorities denied serious irregularities in Sunday's vote and brought thousands of extra police into the capital in preparation for more protests. On Sunday police occupied the city center as an estimated 35,000 people, many bused from provincial towns, turned out for Mr. Putin's victory party.
Mr. Putin, hatless in a frigid wind that he later said caused his eyes to tear, appeared with President Dmitry Medvedev, the protégé who took over the presidency in 2008 after term limits obliged Mr. Putin to step aside.
The protests that erupted in December reflected popular disdain for the two men's announcement last fall that they would simply switch jobs. Many had looked to Mr. Medvedev as a liberal, Western-oriented alternative to his mentor, a former Soviet KGB officer.
The tone of Mr. Putin's presidency is certain to be different from Mr. Medvedev's.
During the campaign, Mr. Putin took a hard line, attacking the U.S., rejecting calls for major political reforms and defending his populist and state-oriented economic policies as he played to his base of older, traditionalist voters.
While he assured supporters at campaign headquarters early Monday that all his campaign promises would be fulfilled, the question is how much he will adjust his agenda in the coming months to reflect the growing strength of his opponents.
And although he has long been viewed as Russia's paramount leader, his return to the Kremlin is likely to bring some shifts from the rule of Mr. Medvedev, who had sought to woo the urban middle class with pledges to fight corruption, strengthen the rule of law and modernize the economy.
Mr. Medvedev, for example, responded to the street protests last year with proposals to ease tight restrictions on party registration and reinstate elections for regional governors—both steps that undo changes originally imposed under Mr. Putin.
On Sunday, Mr. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, endorsed those proposals, which are still under consideration in parliament, but warned that the Kremlin will go slow on opening up the political system.
"There will be no revolutions, and moreover, no Gorbachevian spasms of liberalism," he said in a radio interview, referring to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, whose reforms in the late 1980s accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union.
"The political system needs to catch up a bit to the level of development of our civil society," Mr. Peskov said, adding that any change will be "evolutionary."
In economic policy, Mr. Putin has in recent months adopted business-friendly rhetoric, seeking much-needed investment. Political uncertainty and fears that his return would worsen an already cool business climate have contributed to near-record levels of capital flight over the last year.
Mr. Putin has promised to business groups that he will ease pressure on entrepreneurs and reduce the government's tight grip on the economy, in part by privatizing some large state-owned companies.
At the same time, his government faces looming budget problems as it seeks to pay for costly increases in social and defense spending without raising taxes.
Some of the early indications of what the new Putin administration will bring could come in foreign policy, where the Kremlin has often pivoted away from hard-line stances when they were no longer needed for domestic political gain.
During the campaign, Mr. Putin attacked the U.S. and the West as seeking to dominate the world and undermine Russia, themes that he has used repeatedly to mobilize supporters. Many observers expect the tone to soften now that the election has been won.
Civil strife in Syria has provoked the deepest tensions between Moscow and the West seen in the last several years, according to Western diplomats, as Russia, backed by China, has twice blocked efforts in the United Nations Security Council to increase pressure on the government of Bashar al-Assad.
During the campaign, Mr. Putin harshly attacked the U.S. and its allies for what he called a "bellicose itch" and efforts to use the revolutions of the Arab Spring as a pretext to "redistribute markets" to the detriment of Russian companies.
But Western diplomats and analysts say they are hopeful that the Kremlin could soften its tough line now that Russia's elections are past. Already Mr. Putin and other Russian officials have begun carefully distancing themselves from Mr. Assad.
Similarly, U.S. officials are hoping the Kremlin will ditch the harshly anti-American rhetoric that has been a hallmark of the campaign, including personal attacks in state media against Michael McFaul, the ex-White House aide who arrived as ambassador in Moscow in January.
Mr. Putin accused the U.S. of fomenting the opposition demonstrations and seeking to undermine his government.
U.S. officials say they've received high-level assurances from Moscow that the improvement in relations seen under Mr. Medvedev will continue under Mr. Putin. Some analysts in Moscow, too, expect that the Kremlin will drop the anti-American line to allow it to focus on the more pressing problems at home.
Tens of thousands of Russians signed up as volunteer poll observers and there were numerous reports of violations Sunday.
Mr. Navalny said independent monitors who observed the vote count reported Mr. Putin falling short of a majority in Moscow and other large cities.
Golos, an independent poll-monitoring group that has been accused by the Kremlin of bias against the government, posted claims of about 1,500 electoral violations on its Web site.
The Interior Ministry said it hadn't found any violations that would cast doubt on the outcome of the vote.
WSJ
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