Who or what was he crying for?
Relief that a poll international observers say was so stacked as to be never in doubt had turned out in his favour?
Elation that his grand master plan - hatched before he swapped roles with his protege Dimitry Medvedev to become prime minister four years ago - had come to fruition and he was once more to occupy the Kremlin as the country's president?
Or simply a combination of the icy winds and an overflowing cocktail of pent-up emotions laced with lashings of narcissism?
The new president, just like the old one, really does seem to believe that all opposition to his benign and inspiring munificence is wrought by forces from outside the country - read "the West" - hell-bent on destroying not only him personally but the entire nation.
Sooner or later, almost all long-serving leaders become corrupted by a pathological need to remain in power; and the psyche which governs that desire in the Russian president seems especially prone to fits of paranoia. One reading of Mr Putin's tearful performance is he really does believe he is the nation's saviour with an almost divine right to be its commander and chief.
That is not how a great number of his fellow countrymen and women see it. On Monday, following the announcement Mr Putin had won the election with 64% of the popular vote, thousands gathered on the streets of Moscow to protest what they saw as "rigged" elections; and the return of a leader widely regarded as presiding over corrupt offices.
They simply want democracy, that genie which once out of the bottle in repressive and authoritarian regimes is notoriously difficult to put back in. As it was, the protesters were confronted by state riot and security police, a core of them, including an opposition leader, finally being arrested.
While no-one, least of all the international monitors, would say democracy was well-served by the elections - there were allegations of vote-rigging and carousel voting in which people were paid to vote several times - some in the West might welcome the result as heralding a further predictable era of government: hard-line internal security and flamboyant, often unhelpful rhetoric on the international stage. Better the devil you know, et cetera.
Whether a new or different Russian president would have shifted the country's position on, for example, Syria, over which it, along with China, has been conspicuously unhelpful in the forum of the United Nations Security Council, is another matter. Equally, it can only be a matter of conjecture as to whether a new president would have changed Russia's attitude to Iran amid the escalating destabilisation of the region fuelled by talk of a strike on nuclear facilities by Israel.
There is likely to be little impact on this country's growing trade relations with Russia unless, of course, the anger and resentment at Mr Putin's anti-democratic tendencies boil over into sustained protest, unrest and destabilisation.
The new-old president will continue to do his best to portray opposition as just this: efforts by dark forces to destabilise and destroy the country. Now set for his third spell in office, albeit broken by his years as prime minister, Mr Putin could yet lead his country for a fourth term.
But unless he proves to be more accommodating and receptive to new democratic forces - particularly among the younger social media-using generations who have acquired a taste for openness and freedom of expression - he could find that even his unwavering self-belief, and the roughshod tactics he has in the past been prepared to deploy to maintain power, will be insufficient to keep him there.
Russia is changing, and its president needs to as well.
