"Dear citizens of Russia,
"Dear friends,
"Just now, in keeping with the Constitution, I took the oath of office. Now I would like to go back to its message and assure you that the President's obligations to uphold the state and to faithfully serve the people will remain sacred to me and will continue to come above all else with me.
"As before, my premise will be that assistance and backing from the citizens of the Russian Federation are the principal and the most reliable support in its President's activity.
"Today, I would like to thank those who have placed their trust in me and honored me by electing me as Russian head of state. All those who have worked to contribute their bit to the nation's achievements in the past four years.
"Like in the previous years, I will be working actively, openly and honestly; I will do my best, everything in my power, to meet the expectations of the millions of people.
"The past [four] years have not been easy to any of us. Quite frankly, this has been a time of ordeal. Many of the problems [facing the nation] seemed just insurmountable back in 2000.
"But in critical situations, the Russian people have manifested their best patriotic, civic qualities. When struggling for their country's territorial integrity and unity. And also when working hard to create a foundation for the growth of Russia's economic potential.
"[By working] together, we have managed to achieve a lot. And we have made all these accomplishments by ourselves.
"It is through our own effort that we have brought up our economic growth rates, that we have overcome the entrenched ideological confrontation to become a unified nation.
"It is through our own effort that we have halted the aggression of international terrorism and averted the country's breakdown.
"It is through our own effort that we have turned our homeland into an open country. A country ready for broad, equality-based cooperation with other countries. A country strengthening its positions in the international arena and capable of upholding, by peaceful means, its legitimate interests in the rapidly changing world.
"The principal goal for the four years ahead will be to transform the potential we have by now accumulated into a new development energy, thereby achieving a fundamentally better quality of life for our people, achieving a tangible improvement in their living standards.
"We say time and again that in Russia, the head of state is and will be responsible for everything. This still holds true. But today, profoundly aware of the degree of my personal responsibility, I would like to point out that success and prosperity of Russia cannot and should not depend on one individual or on one political party, one political force. We need a broad support base to be able to carry on with reforms in this country.
"I firmly believe that mature civil society is the best guarantee for such continuity.
"Only free people [living] in a free country can be truly successful. This is the basis both for Russia's economic growth and its political stability.
"And we will be doing everything to make it possible for each person to fulfill his/her talent and capabilities, for a multi-partisan system to develop in deed and for citizens' individual freedoms to strengthen; for people in Russia to be able to get good education, decent welfare benefits and medical care; for them to live in prosperity and to be able to pass the results of their labor down to their offspring. And, of course, for [all of] us to be able to be proud of the prestige of our strong, but peace-loving country.
"Dear friends,
"We still have a lot of work to do-for the country, for ourselves, and for our children. We now have all necessary resources to achieve the goals set. We have [natural] reserves, we have personal experience, a complete awareness of development priorities, one based on the positive [experience] of the last four years. And we have a huge potential, a great amount of energy, our people's intellectual potential.
"We are inheritors of the millenium-old Russia. A country that has brought forth outstanding sons and daughters: laborers, soldiers, and artists. They have passed on to us a vast and mighty power.
"Our past empowers us, of course. But whatever glorious, our history won't be able, by itself, to make our lives better. The grandeur [of the Russian history] should be reinforced. Reinforced with new achievements of the new generations of our country's citizens.
"And only then will our descendants take pride in the pages we add to the biography of the great Russia.
"Thank you for your attention."
