- This content was produced in Russia, where the law restricts coverage of Russian military operations in Ukraine
MOSCOW, February 21 (Portal) – President Vladimir Putin will update Russia’s political and military elite on the status of his “military special operation” in Ukraine on Tuesday, with many Russians eager to confirm his plans for the coming year experience.
Putin will lay out his latest thinking in a speech to members of both houses of parliament, as well as military commanders and soldiers, nearly a year after he sent troops to Ukraine, a decision that sparked the biggest confrontation with the West since the depths of the Cold War .
“At such a crucial and very complicated point in our development, our life, everyone is waiting for a news, hoping to hear an assessment of what is happening, an assessment of the special military operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television.
Putin will also give his analysis of the international situation and outline his vision of Russia’s development after the West imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia, the Kremlin said.
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The speech is scheduled to begin at 0900 GMT in central Moscow.
The Ukraine conflict is by far the biggest bet by a Kremlin boss since at least the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 – and a gamble that Western leaders like US President Joe Biden say he must lose.
Russian forces have suffered three major turns on the battlefield since the start of the war, but still control about a fifth of Ukraine.
Tens of thousands of men have been killed and Putin, 70, now says Russia is locked in an existential struggle with an arrogant West that wants to dismember Russia and steal its vast natural resources.
Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny on Monday accused Putin of destroying Russia’s future for the sake of his personal ambitions.
“The real reasons for this war are the political and economic problems in Russia, Putin’s desire to remain in power at all costs and his obsession with his own historical legacy,” Navalny said.
“He wants to go down in history as ‘the conqueror archzar’.”
With Western support for Ukraine, China’s position has come under scrutiny in recent weeks.
China’s top diplomat Wang Yi is set to visit Moscow shortly and may even meet Putin amid US concerns Beijing is considering supplying arms to Russia.
Chinese arms sales to Russia would risk a potential escalation of the Ukraine war into a confrontation between Russia and China on the one hand and Ukraine and the US-led NATO military alliance on the other.
Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Edited by Andrew Osborn and Alison Williams
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