Russian President Vladimir Putin, in an annual address to the nation on Tuesday, accused the West of using the conflict in Ukraine to “finish” Russia and said Westerners bore “responsibility” for the escalation.
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“The elites of the West do not hide their goal: to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, that is, to deal with us once and for all,” he hammered in a speech delivered three days before the Russian’s first anniversary, insultingly.
“Responsibility for the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict and its victims (…) lies entirely with the Western elites,” the Russian president said, repeating his thesis that the West supported neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine to cement an anti-Russian state .
He had previously said that a year after he launched his offensive in Ukraine, he was determined to continue while his army had been fighting on the battlefield for months, despite the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of reservists.
“In order to ensure the security of our country and eliminate threats from a neo-Nazi regime that has existed in Ukraine since the 2014 coup, it was decided to conduct a special military operation. And we will carefully and methodically set the goals ahead, step by step,” he pounded.
Speaking to the country’s political elite and the military fighting in Ukraine, he also thanked “the entire Russian people for their courage and determination.”
However, Mr Putin did not outline a strategy to win the conflict in Ukraine, nor did he mention Russia’s military losses, which Ukraine and the West consider to be miserable.
Referring to the international sanctions against Russia, Putin said that the West “hasn’t and won’t achieve anything,” while the Russian economy has resisted better than experts expected.
“We ensured the stability of the economic situation, protected citizens,” he said, believing that the West failed to “destabilize our society.”
According to him, the decline in GDP in 2022 of just 2.1% is a success. He also assured that inflation will soon stabilize near its 4% target for the year.
Addressing wealthy Russian businessmen whose assets, yachts or accounts abroad have been confiscated under the sanctions, Putin stressed that “no one among the common people feels sorry for them”, recalling how an elite of oligarchs after the Fall of the Russian Federation became rich USSR.
The Russian President therefore called on them to embrace economic patriotism: “The sources of future prosperity must be here, in the homeland of Russia.”
“Invest in Russia,” he said. “The state and society will support you.”
Vladimir Putin also called for the prosecution of “traitors” in Russia amid the suppression of any voice critical of the Kremlin and the conflict in Ukraine with arrests and heavy prison sentences.
“Those who chose to betray Russia must be held accountable before the law,” the Russian president said in a speech to the nation, before assuring it was not a “witch hunt.”
In Russia, no critical voice from the Kremlin is tolerated. Since the attack on Ukraine began, any criticism of the army has been punished with 15 years in prison, and the few opposition figures who have not gone into exile have been imprisoned, such as ‘Ilia Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza. But many anonymous people were also arrested for opposing the Kremlin.
Tens of thousands of Russians, perhaps hundreds of thousands, have also been in exile for a year, fearing repression or being mobilized to the front.
Finally, as he has done for several years, Mr Putin again portrayed the West as decadent because he believed that pedophilia had become the norm there.
“Look at what they do to their own people: the destruction of families, cultural and national identities, perversion and child abuse, including pedophilia, are declared to be the norm (…). And priests have an obligation to bless marriages between same people,” he said in his speech.