FROM OUR REPORTER
MOSCOW – At one point, he made the quotation mark gesture with the fingers of both hands. Experts assure us that this is an absolute first. While he said he couldn’t rule out a dismemberment of Russia, including at an ethnic level, which would give life to many different peoples, such as the “Muscovites” and the “Urals,” the collective West would split highly. “Because the only goal is to liquidate us.”
The short interview that Putin granted to the Moscow-Kremlin program on the second public channel is almost a footnote to his February 21 speech to the Federal Assembly on the occasion. “They have one goal, to dismantle the former Soviet Union and its main part, that is us. Then perhaps they will accept us into the so-called family of civilized peoples. But only in parts. And this in order to be able to command them at will and put them under their absolute control. This is a written plan that we knew about but never disclosed just because we hoped to establish acceptable relations with the West. But if it succeeds, our people as we know them may not survive a dissolution of the Russian Federation.”
During a brief standing conversation, taped Wednesday after the Defender of the Fatherland Day concert at Moscow Stadium, the Russian president made his personal definition of a military special operation even clearer as a conflict on which his country’s existence depends. “But the events of the past year have brought us even closer together. And our people are second to none when united.’
Elsewhere, Putin said he was not at all opposed to the idea that the world should change, acknowledging that Russia’s potential today is very different from that of the former Soviet Union. «In fact, we understand that changes are necessary, we also agree with a possible reform of the UN. But we are against a world subservient only to American interests».
The final question prompted a brief summary of the alleged reasons that led Russia to suspend its membership in the New Start treaty, which limits strategic armaments. «In the current conditions, when it is clear that we are fighting against NATO and the main countries of the alliance declare that they want to inflict a strategic defeat on us in order to make our people suffer, we have a duty to account for the scope their nuclear arsenals”. “They” all together against us, who instead we are alone but strong.
The Russian script, to be performed in the coming months, has now been finalized. Meanwhile, US State Department spokesman Ned Price says the US will never recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea nine years ago. “It was a clear violation of international law, sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Ukraine.” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan added that the fate of the peninsula must be decided by the Ukrainians “with our support,” Zelenskyy has no doubts about that, he says. “We’ll get it back.”