President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday vowed to press onward with Russia’s war in Ukraine and railed against the West for a litany of wrongdoings in his first state-of-the-nation address since invading Ukraine one year ago.
Addressing lawmakers from both houses of parliament, Putin relied on familiar talking points as he pledged to continue Russia’s offensive that started with a failed attempt to capture Kyiv and has gradually slowed to a brutal war of attrition in eastern Ukraine.
“Step by step, we will carefully and systematically achieve the aims that face us,” Putin said ahead of the anniversary of the war on Feb. 24.
Putin echoed his oft-repeated assertion that Western countries’ actions forced Russia to invade Ukraine one year ago.
“Russia did its best to solve the problem in Ukraine peacefully, but the statements of Western leaders turned out to be fraudulent and untrue,” Putin said at the Gostinyy Dvor hall near Red Square, referring to the Ukrainian theater of war as “historical Russian land.”
“They were dragging their feet… they were playing with people’s lives.”
“It’s them who unleashed the war. And we’re using force to stop it,” he said to widespread applause. “They let the genie out of the bottle [and] plunged entire regions into chaos.”
Today, he claimed, Western leaders continue to escalate by providing military aid for Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Moscow.
“The responsibility for fueling the Ukrainian conflict, for its escalation, for the number of victims… lies completely with Western elites,” Putin said, claiming that these elites were attempting to “inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.”
Political expert Tatiana Stanovaya said that, while Putin did not appear to be saying anything new, there was a new level of radicalization in his words.
“All these old ideas are presented in a much more radicalized way,” she said on Telegram.
While nuclear saber-rattling was largely absent from the speech, Putin said that further Western arms deliveries to Ukraine would lead to a Russian response.
“The more long-range Western systems are delivered into Ukraine, the further we’ll have to push the threat from our borders,” he said.
But he did announce a suspension in New START, the last remaining arms reduction pact with the U.S. that capped the number of nuclear warheads held by the former Cold War rivals.
“No one should be under the illusion that global strategic parity can be violated,” Putin said.
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He reiterated his claim that Western countries that sanctioned Russia over the war “haven’t achieved anything” and said the Russian economy had shown resilience.
“Russia is actually entering a new cycle of economic development,” he said. “There’s every opportunity for a breakthrough in many areas.”
“There won’t be a ‘guns instead of oil’ situation in Russia,” he added.
And Putin criticized the hundreds of thousands of Russians who had fled the country since the start of the invasion as “traitors,” but said the authorities won’t “engage in a witch hunt.”
Shortly after Putin’s speech came to an end, Kyiv vowed to “kick out” and “punish” Russia for its invasion.
“They are strategically at a dead end,” Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on the Telegram messaging app. “Our goal is to kick them out of Ukraine and punish them for everything.”
‘This is our new life’
Former Kremlin official Alexei Chesnakov said the address signals Putin’s readiness to continue taking a hard line against those who oppose the war and the Kremlin’s policies.
“[There was] an important emphasis in terms of assessments of ‘national traitors’ and those who retreated. Putin makes it clear that the government will consistently implement a program to combat ‘foreign agents’,” Chesnakov said.
The fact that Putin did not make any groundbreaking declarations should be taken as a positive sign, Russian political analyst Alexander Kynev said.
According to pro-Kremlin expert Sergei Markov, the speech was likely meant to convey to Russians that they should come to terms with the new reality that the war has created.
“Putin gave an answer to the main question in the minds of Russian citizens: When will this so-called ‘special military operation’ end? The answer is in the whole speech. It’s not over yet. All of this is for the long haul. This is our new life. Learn to live in it.”
