president Wladimir Putin has not only intensified his Aggressive war in Ukrainebut it has embarked on a course, domestically, economically and culturally, which reinforces its goal of a decisive break between Russia and the West.
Putin’s State of the Union address on Tuesday offered no hope that it would end the warentering his second year, nor that he would give up his ambition split the Ukrainian state.
But his speech also emphasized that his war is closely related to a parallel effort end internal dissent And Isolate Russia by what it damn calls hostile or degenerate Western influences.
In other words, Putin’s goals are not only the permanent territorial conquest of Ukraine, but that Rebuilding Russian society on a permanent non-Western basisthe reversal of a trend that has been happening since seizures and beginnings died Joseph Stalin in 1953.
Putin’s first goal is reason enough for the Ukrainian people to continue their war of self-defense. But his second goal underscores that Gap that has emerged between his vision of Russia and a Ukrainian society increasingly identifying with the West since the Kremlin annexed Crimea and encouraged secession in southeastern Ukraine in 2014.
Putin intervened just hours before the US President Joe Biden will give a speech Warsaw in which he was expected to describe the Western support for Ukraine as a joint effort Defense of democracy, national independence and territorial integrity from this country.
Confirmation that the deterioration in US-Russian relations extends beyond the Ukraine war appeared in Putin’s statement that Moscow will do so to suspend its participation in the New START treaty on intercontinental nuclear weaponsthe last major surviving nuclear arms control treaty between the two countries.
However, the thrust of Putin’s speech was reflected in his claim Russia is suffering a military, political, economic and cultural attack from the West and that Ukraine’s pro-Western leaders are pawns in this strategy.
In an apparent reference to the arguments of some commentators, mainly in the United States and parts of Central and Eastern Europe, that the Russian state itself could crumble under the pressure of the Ukraine war, Putin attacked the West “to bet that there will be national traitors” who “break Russia from within”.
I confirm that the Russian economy became more self-sufficient thanks to Western sanctionsand reiterated his commitment to infusing non-Western patriotic values into his country’s education system.
It was significant that at various points in his speech Putin showed his Contempt for Russian corporate oligarchs trying to maintain a privileged life in the Westand praise the distinctive historical tradition of Russian identity, rooted in the orthodox Christian religion.
In fact, Putin warned the business elite that their imaginations will reconfigure state and society Western tendencies have no place which began to shape much of the Russian economy during his tenure in the 1990s Boris Yeltsinthe nation’s first post-communist president.
Putin even quoted approvingly Pyotr StolypinPrime Minister of Nicholas II after the 1905 revolution: “In the matter of defending Russia, we must unite and coordinate all our efforts, rights and duties in support of the only superior and historical right of Russia: the right to be strong“.
This is how the President wanted to cover its legitimacy what he thought of as a pre-communist tradition powerful and centralized state that organizes the Russian society around a common goal.
For Putin, one element of that common goal is an unrelenting and still incomplete military campaign in Ukraine. An early end to the war does not seem likely.
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