Tuesday, February 21, 2023 | 8:38 a.m.
The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, assured that he will continue “systematically” with the war in Ukraine, blamed the West for generating the invasion and announced that he is suspending Moscow’s participation in the New Start nuclear treaty signed with the US that limits the atomic arsenal of both powers.
Putin delivers his first speech before Parliament since April last year. A presentation scheduled for the end of 2022 that was canceled with the excuse of “scheduling problems”, according to the official version, when only bad news came from the battlefront for the Russian hierarch.
“To ensure the security of our country, to eliminate the threat posed by the neo-Nazi regime that emerged in Ukraine after the 2014 coup, it was decided to carry out a special military operation. Step by step, carefully and consistently, we will achieve the tasks we face,” Putin said in his state of the nation address to both houses of Parliament.
Among the special guests at the Duma are a significant number of soldiers in the audience.
“I am addressing you at a difficult and key moment for our country, at a time of profound change throughout the world,” Putin told senior Russian officials and political elites.
The Russian president again lashed out at the West, justifying the invasion by accusing his rivals of threatening Russia. “It is they who have started the war. And we are using force to put an end to it,” Putin said. “The responsibility for fueling the Ukrainian conflict, for its escalation, for the number of casualties… lies entirely with Western elites,” he noted.
According to him, the West wants to deal Russia a “strategic defeat” in Ukraine. “They want to end it (Russia) once and for all,” the Kremlin chief said.
In addition, he said that the bloc knows that “it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield”, so it launches “aggressive information attacks” against Russia by “misrepresenting historical facts”, attacking Russian culture, religion and values. And, as he put it, “pedophilia” became “the norm” in the West. “Look what they do to their own people: the destruction of families, of cultural and national identities and the perversion of child abuse to pedophilia are announced as the norm… and priests are forced to bless the same-sex marriages,” he said, defending Russian traditions.
The president assured that he did “everything possible, really everything possible, to solve this problem by peaceful means”, but blamed Ukraine for not resolving the situation in the Donbas. “We have been patiently negotiating a peaceful solution to this very difficult conflict. But behind our backs a completely different scenario was being prepared,” he expressed.
He argued that the Kiev regime did not address the region’s problems, but rather aggravated them: “They were only buying time, turning a blind eye to political assassinations, to the Kiev regime’s repression of the unwanted, to the harassment of believers”.
“And I want to emphasize that even before the start of the special military operation, Kiev was negotiating with the West for the supply of air defense systems, combat aircraft and other heavy equipment to Ukraine,” he alleged, while again accusing Ukraine of have attempted to “acquire nuclear weapons”.
He also accused the US and NATO of “rapidly deploying their military bases and secret biological laboratories near the borders” of Russia, of “dominating the theater of future military operations with maneuvers”, and of preparing an “enslaved Ukraine for a great war”.
“And today they admit it publicly, without hesitation. They seem to be proud, reveling in their betrayal, calling both the Minsk (peace) Agreements and the Normandy format a diplomatic performance, a bluff,” he denounced. Putin maintained that the West therefore played “with marked cards”.
Within the framework of the confrontation with Washington, he announced the suspension of his country’s compliance with START III or New START, the last nuclear disarmament treaty still in force between Russia and the US. The pact, signed in 2011 and renewed for five years in 2021, but Moscow had not been complying with allowing routine inspections within its territory. “No one should have any illusions that global strategic parity can be violated,” Putin argued, calling on Russian authorities to be “ready for nuclear weapons tests” if the United States conducts them first.
The president also warned that his persecution of dissidents will not cease. “Those who have embarked on the path of betrayal of Russia must answer to the law,” Putin said, although he qualified that the authorities would not unleash a “witch hunt.”
Referring to the international sanctions that affect Russia, Putin estimated that the Westerners “have not achieved anything and will not achieve anything”, since the Russian economy resisted better than what experts had predicted.
“We have guaranteed the stability of the economic situation, protected citizens,” Putin said, estimating that the West failed to “destabilize” Russian society.
At the domestic level, Putin left the door open to run for re-election in the 2024 presidential elections. with the legislation, respecting all constitutional democratic procedures,” he said, referring to the controversial 2020 constitutional reform, which will allow him to run for re-election in 2024 and 2030.
Putin, 70, came to power in 2000, was re-elected in 2004, served four years as prime minister, returned to the Kremlin in 2012 and was re-elected again in 2018. Some analysts point out that in the event of defeat in the military campaign in Ukraine or declaration of martial law, the presidential elections could be postponed indefinitely.
great expectation
Government spokesman Dmitry Peskov had anticipated that the Russian leader would focus on the “special military operation” in Ukraine, as Moscow calls it, and on Russia’s economy and social affairs. Many observers also expected the speech to address Moscow’s disagreements with the West.
Underscoring the expectation, some state television channels put a countdown to the event from Monday, and Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti said Tuesday morning that the speech could be “historic.”
Peskov told reporters the delay in the speech had to do with Putin’s “work schedule”, but Russian media linked it to the multiple setbacks Russian forces have suffered on the Ukrainian battlefield.
Last year, the Kremlin also canceled two other big annual events: Putin’s press conference and a heavily scripted phone marathon in which people ask the president questions.
Among the first reactions to the message, a senior US official called Putin’s accusations that Russia had been threatened by the West as a justification for invading Ukraine as “absurd”.
“No one is attacking Russia. There is a kind of absurdity in the notion that Russia was under some kind of military threat from Ukraine or anyone else,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
