Vladimir Putin today accused the West of threatening Russia's very existence with the war in Ukraine, assuring Russians that Russia's future is at stake and scaring them with the alleged rise of gays and "pedophilia" in the West and the invented dominance of "neo-Nazis" from Ukraine.
Putin announced that Russia is suspending its participation in the New START treaty with the United States. The New START treaty limits the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy, as well as the deployment of missiles and land and submarine bombers to deliver them.
Putin pointed out that Russia is not withdrawing from the treaty but is suspending its participation in an agreement that was signed in Prague in 2010 and entered into force the following year. It was extended in 2021 for five more years just after Joe Biden took office as president. "The United States is developing new types of nuclear weapons. And the Russian Defense Ministry and Rosatom [the Russian atomic agency] must be ready to test Russian nuclear weapons. Of course, we will not be the first to do so. But if the United States United tests, then we will too. No one should have dangerous illusions that global strategic parity can be destroyed."
Nearly a year after the start of a days-long war that has united the West and Ukrainians against a brutal invasion, the Russian leader appeared before parliament flanked by four Russian tricolors on either side. Putin accused the West of stoking a world war to destroy Russia.
"The West is talking about democracy but trying to impose its totalitarian values," Russian President Vladimir Putin said today. "They started the war and we used force to stop it," Putin has accused.
With a serious face and in many cases a frown, he was listened to by the obedient political and military elite of Russia. Putin assured them that the country "will solve the tasks before us." Because "Russia is invincible on the battlefield." The Western elite "does not hide its goal: to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, that is, to finish us off once and for all," he added.
"Foster Russophobia, end Russia and transform a local conflict into a global one," he continued. "We will defend our children from the degradation of the West, which wants to break our society," she said.
The Russian president said in his speech before both houses of Parliament that Russia wanted to resolve the Ukraine conflict peacefully but Western countries had prepared a "different scenario" behind their backs, using "totalitarian" rhetoric that "they call liberal." .
Although Russian troops have met with stiff resistance from the Ukrainians to the point of holding back the advance and recapturing some territories, Putin insisted that defeating Russia is impossible. If the Ukrainians do not allow themselves to be occupied, it is because "the Ukrainian people themselves have become hostages to the Kiev regime and its Western masters, who have in fact occupied this country in a political, military and economic sense," Putin said.
"One thing must be clear to everyone: the greater the range of the weapons supplied to Ukraine, the more we will be forced to move the threat away from our borders," he added.
Today many were watching how Putin responded to Joe Biden, who yesterday visited kyiv on a surprise trip to reaffirm his commitment to Ukraine. "I am making this speech at a time that we all know is a difficult and defining moment for our country, a moment of cardinal and irreversible changes around the world, important historical events that will shape the future of our country and our people," he said. Putin, whose troops have suffered three major battlefield defeats since the war began but still control about a fifth of Ukraine. "Russia's economy," Putin congratulated himself, "has overcome the risks."
"This is about the survival of our country," said Putin, who boasted of the roads his country is preparing to build in the occupied territories, which according to his account "decided to voluntarily join Russia and get rid of the Nazis." At the same time, the UN reported more than 8,000 civilian deaths since Russia invaded Ukraine.
"We were doing everything possible to resolve this problem peacefully, negotiating a peaceful way out of this difficult conflict, but a very different scenario was being prepared behind our backs," Putin told lawmakers in the Russian parliament. Drawing applause from him, he accused the US of starting it all, building "an anti-Russian Ukraine", supporting the "coup in 2014".
In an hour-long speech, Putin has also had time to talk about the economy. The West is also guilty "of the increase in prices in their countries, the closure of factories, the collapse of the energy sector." The West "has stolen Russia's gold", but despite all this, the country's economy "is not collapsing", the Western sanctions that were going to make "the Russian people suffer" have not been successful: "Russia does business with many areas of the world".
Today is Putin's annual speech before the two houses of the Russian Parliament that was not held in 2022, a year in which he also did not give his traditional and massive rounds of questions with citizens and journalists.
Putin's last speech before the full Parliament took place on April 21, 2021. This time Moscow did not accredit journalists from "unfriendly" countries. Just a year ago Putin recognized the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, which Russia later annexed at the end of 2022.
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