MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin today gave a senior government post to a tank factory worker who had offered to come to Moscow with fellow laborers to disperse opposition protests.

Putin said he would make Igor Kholmanskikh the presidential envoy to the Ural Mountains region, saying the job will help him protect the interests of workers.

Kholmanskikh, a section head at the Uralvagonzavod factory that builds battle tanks in the Urals city of Nizhny Tagil, became widely known when he denounced anti-Putin protesters during a live TV program in December in which Putin took call-in questions. He said he and colleagues would help clear the streets of demonstrators if police couldn’t.

Putin won a third presidential term in March’s vote despite a series of unprecedented protests against his rule that drew more than 100,000 people to the streets of Moscow. During his campaign, Putin cast the mostly middle-class protesters as rich, coddled urbanites manipulated by the U.S. He focused mostly on his core support base of blue-collar workers, farmers and state employees.