Putin criticizes the West in state of the nation address

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin arrives on stage for his annual state of the nation address, in Moscow, Russia, on February 21, 2023. (Dmitry Astakhov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday accused the West of starting and maintaining the war in Ukraine and denied any blame on Moscow nearly a year after the Kremlin’s unprovoked invasion of its neighbor that has killed tens of thousands of people.

In his long-delayed state of the nation address, Putin portrayed Russia, and Ukraine, as victims of the West’s double game and said it was his country, not Kiev, that was fighting for its very existence.

“We are not fighting the Ukrainian people,” Putin said in his speech on the eve of the first anniversary of the start of the war on Friday. Ukraine “has become a hostage to the Kiev regime and its Western masters, who have de facto occupied the country”.

The speech repeated the litany of grievances the Russian leader often offers to justify the widely condemned war and ignored international demands to withdraw from areas he has occupied in the neighboring country.

Observers are expected to scrutinize his words for clues as to how the president sees the conflict, which is practically at a standstill, and the tone for the rest of the year. Putin has vowed that he will not stop military operations in the Ukrainian territories that he illegally annexed, in an apparent rejection of any attempt at peace in a conflict that has revived fears of a new Cold War.

Instead, he offered his personalized version of recent history, which dismisses the Ukrainian government’s arguments that it needed Western help to stop the Kremlin’s military operation.

“Western elites are not trying to hide their goals, to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia,” Putin said in a speech broadcast on all state television. “They want to turn the local conflict into a global confrontation.”

Moscow is prepared to answer this as “it will be an existential question for our country,” he added.

Although the constitution obliges the president to deliver an annual speech, Putin failed to do so in 2022 as his troops marched into Ukraine and suffered repeated setbacks.

Before the event, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian leader would focus on the “special military operation” in Ukraine, as Moscow calls the operation, and on the country’s economic and social issues. Many observers predicted that he would address the rift between Moscow and the West, and Putin began by directing harsh words at those nations.

“It is they who have started the war. And we are using force to end it,” Putin told an audience of lawmakers, state officials and soldiers who fought in Ukraine, among others.

Putin accused the West of launching “aggressive information attacks” against Russian culture, religion and values ​​because he is aware that “it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield.”

In addition, he indicated that the West attacks the economy of his country with sanctions, but declared that they had “achieved nothing and will not achieve it.”

The president also announced that Moscow will suspend its participation in a treaty to curb the proliferation of nuclear weapons. New START, which was signed by Russia and the United States in 2010, limits the number of long-range nuclear warheads they can deploy as well as the use of missiles that can carry atomic weapons.

Putin said the Kremlin has not fully withdrawn from the treaty yet but noted that it should be prepared to resume nuclear weapons tests if the United States does so.

The Kremlin earlier this year banned media from “non-friendly” countries, including the United States, Britain and the European Union, from the speech. According to Peskov, journalists from those areas could cover the speech by watching the broadcast.

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