Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday accused the West of using the Ukraine conflict to “finish off” Russia, in an annual address to the nation, saying Westerners bear “responsibility” for the escalation .
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“The elites of the West do not hide their objective: to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, that is to say to finish with us once and for all”, he hammered, in a speech intervening three days before the first anniversary of the Russian offensive.
“The responsibility for the escalation in the Ukrainian conflict and its victims […] rests totally on the Western elites,” said the Russian president, repeating his thesis that the West is supporting neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine to consolidate an anti-Russian state there.
Before that, he had said that he remained determined, a year after the start of his offensive in Ukraine, to continue it, while his army has been struggling for months on the battlefield, despite the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists.
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“To ensure the security of our country, to eliminate threats from a neo-Nazi regime that has existed in Ukraine since the 2014 coup, it was decided to carry out a special military operation. And we are going to settle step by step, carefully and methodically, the objectives which arise in front of us”, he hammered.
Facing the country’s political elite and soldiers who fought in Ukraine, he also thanked “all the Russian people for their courage and determination”.
Mr. Putin, however, did not outline a strategy for winning the conflict in Ukraine or mention the Russian military losses which, according to Ukraine and the West, are abysmal.
Referring to the international sanctions that are hitting Russia, Mr. Putin said that the West “didn’t achieve anything and will achieve nothing”, while the Russian economy has held up better than expected.
“We have ensured the stability of the economic situation, protected the citizens”, he noted, believing that the West had failed to “destabilize our society”.
According to him, the drop in GDP in 2022 of only 2.1% is a success. He also assured that inflation would soon stabilize near its annual target of 4%.
Addressing wealthy Russian businessmen whose assets, yachts or accounts have been seized abroad as part of the sanctions, Mr Putin stressed that “no one among the simple people feels sorry for them”, recalling how an elite of oligarchs got rich after the fall of the USSR.
The Russian president therefore called them to economic patriotism: “The sources of well-being, of the future, must be here, in the native country, Russia.”
“Invest in Russia,” he said, “state and society will support you.”
Vladimir Putin also called for the prosecution of “traitors” in Russia, in the midst of a repression of any voice critical of the Kremlin and the conflict in Ukraine, with arrests and heavy prison sentences.
“Those who have chosen to betray Russia must be held accountable before the law,” said the Russian president during a speech to the nation, before assuring that it was not a question of ” witch hunt”.
No critical voice from the Kremlin is tolerated in Russia. Since the start of the assault on Ukraine, any criticism of the army has been punishable by 15 years in prison, and the few opposition figures who have not gone into exile have been imprisoned, like ‘Ilia Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza. But many anonymous people have also been arrested for taking a stand against the Kremlin.
Tens of thousands of Russians, perhaps hundreds of thousands, have also gone into exile for a year, when they feared repression or were afraid of being mobilized on the front.
Finally, Mr. Putin, as he has done for several years, again presented the West as decadent, believing that pedophilia had become a norm there.
“Look at what they are doing with their own people: destroying families, cultural and national identities; perversion and child abuse up to pedophilia are declared to be the norm […]. And priests are obliged to bless marriages between homosexuals,” he said in his speech.
France called on Russia to “show responsibility and to return as quickly as possible to its announcement of suspension” of its participation in the Russian-American New Start treaty on nuclear power.
Paris “recalls that the New Start treaty constitutes an essential instrument of the international architecture of nuclear arms control and strategic stability”, specified in a press release Anne-Claire Legendre, the spokesperson for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.