Putin Gives No Ground In Key Speech As War Enters Second Year

“They were the ones who started the war,” Vladimir Putin said Tuesday, during a marathon state-of-the-nation address, his first since condemning tens of thousands of young Russians to a homicidal suicide mission in Ukraine.

Putin provided no evidence for a claim that Ukraine and the West were plotting to besiege the Donbas just prior to the invasion. Russia, he declared, is “using force to stop the war.” There wasn’t so much as a hint of irony.

Over some two hours, Putin broke little new ground. Given battlefield setbacks and Joe Biden’s surprise visit to Kyiv, some expected an irritable diatribe, laced with vitriol and threats. Instead, Putin trod methodically through what, for him, is familiar territory. He spun a conspiratorial tale of “totalitarian liberals” and “neo-Nazis,” using offbeat anecdotes to support assertions of Western “godlessness.” He mocked the Church of England for considering an initiative to allow priests to refer to God in gender-neutral terms, for example, and derided same-sex marriage in America.

“The United States and NATO rapidly deployed their army bases and secret biological laboratories near the borders of our country, mastered the theater of future military operations in the course of maneuvers, prepared the Kyiv regime subject to them and the Ukraine they had enslaved, for a big war,” Putin claimed, adding that,

And today they admit it — they admit it publicly, openly, without hesitation. They seem to be proud, reveling in their treachery. It turns out that all the time when the Donbas was on fire, when blood was shed, when Russia was sincerely striving for a peaceful solution, they were playing on people’s lives, they were playing, in fact, as they say in well-known circles, with marked cards. Over the long centuries of colonialism, diktat, hegemony, they got used to being allowed everything — got used to spitting on the whole world.

He offered a litany of “Whataboutism,” virtually none of which had any connection whatsoever to Ukraine. The purpose, as ever, was to remind the world about the tragic cost of US military adventurism and the horrific human toll associated with American efforts to bring about regime change around the world.

Again, I’d encourage readers to note that citing unrelated wrongs committed by other people doesn’t give you carte blanche to commit crimes. If it did, society would disintegrate overnight, and there’d be no need for any sort of courts. “How do you plead?” “Not guilty, Your Honor. Someone, somewhere, robbed a store yesterday, after all.”

Crucially, Whataboutism is internally inconsistent. If you cite Iraq, for example, while defending your own actions in Ukraine, implicit is the notion that the Iraq invasion was wrong. So, having made the connection yourself, how is Ukraine not wrong too? It’s unfortunate that I have to explain, at fairly regular intervals, why this logic fails. But the fact that I do underscores why Kremlin propaganda is so effective in the West. Western audiences have become more credulous over time and, I’d argue, less educated. That leaves voters in democracies unable to spot and pick apart faulty logic. A society of could-be lawyers America isn’t.

Putin on Tuesday claimed his army is “impossible to defeat” on the battlefield, a contention that likely seemed incongruous with reality even to some of the hand-picked attendees. The audience included a front-row seat for Patriarch Kirill, among the who’s who of sycophants.

“We are not fighting against the Ukrainian people,” Putin went on, echoing a talking point which, while familiar, is nevertheless nauseating for a Ukrainian populace subjected to near daily missile volleys and drone attacks, some of which appear indiscriminate. “The responsibility for escalation of the Ukrainian conflict is fully and squarely on the Western elite,” he went on.

As for Russia’s elite, Putin feigned indifference. “Believe me, none of our everyday, simple citizens was sorry for those who lost their capital in international banks,” he mused, chiding the very oligarchic kleptocracy atop which he sits. The country’s oligarchs, he suggested, should forget about their “yachts and real estate,” which are probably gone forever. “It’s not the time to cling to the past,” he said.

Needless to say, Putin’s message to Russia’s elite is likely different when the cameras aren’t rolling. It’s true that he enjoys something akin to absolute power, but he also has a pseudo-symbiotic relationship with the oligarchy (not to mention the mob), and that leaves him beholden in a way that Xi Jinping most assuredly isn’t.

Putin correctly touted Russia’s economic resilience in the face of unprecedented Western sanctions, but I suppose the question for “everyday, simple citizens,” as he put it, is why this was necessary at all. It’s nice (for Russia) that the economy has held up better than expected, but it’s hard to argue that it’s better than it would’ve been absent the war.

I suppose you could suggest (as Putin did Tuesday) that self-reliance is never a bad thing, but being entirely cut off from the Western financial system isn’t ideal, and whether the Russian people realize it or not, there’s something ironic about Putin’s self-reliance narrative — in the near-term, at least, “self-reliance” entails becoming a vassal state of Xi’s China.

On domestic policy, Putin spoke about mortgage subsidies, healthcare modernization and a plan to de-Westernize higher education. He also encouraged firms to repatriate funds as “a basic principle.”

As far as anyone could tell, the only thing new in Putin’s address was the announced suspension of Russia’s participation in the only remaining nuclear arms treaty with the US. He called “New START” a “theater of the absurd” aimed at undermining the Russian state. It appeared to be a largely symbolic rebuke. The treaty doesn’t cover tactical nuclear weapons, which is what NATO is concerned about.

In the end, Putin’s message was clear enough. The war is existential to him which, unfortunately, means everyone in Russia is along for the ride. He described the conflict as one of “the most important historical events determining the future of our country and our people,” and said Russian military personnel and conscripts will get “regular leave of at least 14 days” once every six months.

As for Ukraine, he insisted the country’s citizens are “hostages of the Kyiv regime and its Western masters.”