The speech on the state of the nation that the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, gave this Thursday, between the two chambers (Duma and Senate) of the Russian Parliament, has at times seemed like a déjà vu of the words he spoke a year ago from the same tribune. As then, Putin has blamed the West for the war in Ukraine, but has also warned of the risk of nuclear war if NATO troops are sent to the neighboring country. And he has pointed out that Russia can also reach Western countries with its weapons.
The Russian president reacted without naming him to the controversial proposal of the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, who this week evoked the eventual deployment of Western troops in Ukraine.
If that happens, the consequences would be "tragic," Putin warned. At the same time he called the accusations that Moscow plans to attack Europe "nonsense."
"They have begun to talk about the possibility of sending NATO military contingents to Ukraine, but we remember the fate of those who once sent troops to the territory of our country. But now the consequences for potential interventionists will be much more tragic," Putin said during his speech.
In another warning, Putin stressed that Western powers must understand that Russia "also has weapons that can hit targets in its territories." According to him, "all this threatens (to create) a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons and the destruction of civilization. Don't you understand?"
As in other public interventions, Putin repeated that the West not only seeks to slow down our development, but also needs a "dying territory" where Russia is. Putin assured that the objective of Western countries was "to bring disorder to our house and weaken it from within."
"But they were miscalculated," stressed the head of state. "The cohesion of the peoples of Russia is a colossal victorious force," he added.
And he assured that Russian society continues to largely support the war campaign. "When our homeland is defending its sovereignty and security, and protecting the lives of our compatriots in Donbass and Novorossiya, our citizens, our unity, devotion to our native country, play a decisive role in this just fight," said the Russian president referring to the Ukrainian regions that Moscow said it would annex in the fall of 2022.
Putin stated that the West is trying to trap Russia in an arms race like the one that ended up weakening the Soviet Union in the 1980s during the Cold War.
"They are trying to exhaust us, to repeat the trick that worked for them with the Soviet Union. Therefore, our task is to develop the military-industrial complex to increase the scientific, technological and industrial potential of the country," he ordered. "We need to distribute resources as rationally as possible and build an efficient economy of the Armed Forces, to achieve the maximum possible for every ruble spent on defense." he added.
Deputies, senators and other representatives of the political and military elite gathered for the occasion at the Gostini Dvor congress palace, near Moscow's Red Square.
Putin's annual message to Parliament took place one day before the funeral and burial of prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died suddenly on February 16 in an Arctic penal colony, where he was serving several sentences that together totaled three decades of deprivation of liberty.
Navalny's allies, whose name Putin has always avoided saying in public, have denounced this week that their first intention was to celebrate the funeral on February 29, but it was not possible because it coincided with the Russian president's speech.
Iván Zhdanov, one of Navalny's collaborators, now in exile, said on Wednesday on his Telegram channel that it was impossible to order mourning services for this day.
"It quickly became clear that by February 29 there was not a single person who could dig a grave. It was possible on March 1, also on February 28. But not on the 29th," Zhdanov wrote.
Putin dedicated the initial body of his speech to talking about the war in Ukraine, which according to Moscow's official speech, began in 2014; of Russia's nuclear capabilities and relations with the West.
In another idea repeated by the Russian leader ad nauseam in the last two years, he asserted that Russia will do everything possible to end the war in Ukraine and eradicate Nazism in the neighboring country.
"It was not Russia that started the war in Donbass, but we will do everything to end it, eradicate Nazism and fulfill the objectives of the special military operation (in Ukraine)," the Russian leader said, using the term with which Russia calls for military intervention in Ukraine that began two years ago, when Putin ordered the entry of his Army into the neighboring country.
The déjà vu has ended there. Putin's speech this Thursday was delivered at a time when Russian troops deployed in Ukraine are in a much better position than a year ago, when they had suffered humiliating withdrawals in the south and northeast of the country.
After the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive last summer, Kyiv's troops are now the ones on the defensive. In addition, there are shortages of ammunition, the United States continues not to commit vital aid to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. In mid-February, Russian troops took over the city of Avdíyivka and are maintaining pressure in that area.
"Our units firmly hold the initiative. They are confidently advancing in a number of areas and liberating more and more territories," Putin told his audience.
