Within 24 hours of US President Joe Biden’s Ukraine visit for talks and photo ops with that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed Russia’s Federal Assembly. In his speech, Putin accused the Western powers of waging an “anti-Russian” plot, which he claimed is an old scheme. Putin’s speech at Russia’s Federal Assembly underscored the need to protect the country’s sovereignty in the current critical phase.
“Let me reiterate that in the 1930s, the West actually paved the way for the Nazis to come to power in Germany, and now they have started to turn Ukraine into an anti-Russia. The project, in fact, is not new. People who know even the least bit of history know perfectly well, this project goes back to the 19th century,” Putin told the Federal Assembly.
“It (the conspiracy) was nurtured in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, [it was nurtured] by Poland and other countries with one goal: to tear away from our country these historical territories, which today are called Ukraine. This is what this goal is all about, there is nothing new here, no novelty, everyone repeats things,” Putin stressed.
To emphasise the importance of the special military operation Russia launched in Ukraine on February 24th last year to oust neo-Nazis, Putin repeatedly said that Western powers have always used the Nazis against Russia. He expressed confidence that Russia’s military plan to eliminate these neo-Nazi forces would be achieved step by step, carefully.
President Putin said, “One year ago, to protect the people in our historical lands, to ensure the security of our country and to eliminate the threat coming from the neo-Nazi regime that had taken hold in Ukraine after the 2014 coup, it was decided to begin the special military operation. Step by step, carefully and consistently we will deal with the tasks we have at hand.”
Putin’s speech at Russia’s Federal Assembly also pointed to the genocide and persecution of the Russian people in the Donbass region of Ukraine since 2014, alleging that Western powers had turned a blind eye during these events, but Russia could not afford to remain silent.
In his speech, Putin said, “Since 2014, Donbass has been fighting for the right to live in their land and to speak their native tongue. It fought and never gave up amid the blockade, constant shelling and the Kiev regime’s overt hatred. It hoped and waited that Russia would come to help.”
He said that Russia had made many efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict, but nothing had worked. He said, “…we were doing everything in our power to solve this problem by peaceful means, and patiently conducted talks on a peaceful solution to this devastating conflict”.
Putin’s speech at Russia’s Federal Assembly also criticised the US’s military muscle-flexing in eastern Europe. He accused the US and Western powers of hypocrisy over Ukraine.
“The United States and NATO quickly deployed their army bases and secret biological laboratories near Russian borders. They mastered the future theatre of war during war games, and they prepared the Kiev regime which they controlled and Ukraine which they had enslaved for a large-scale war”, Putin said.
Putin alleged, “This appalling method of deception has been tried and tested many times before. They behaved just as shamelessly and duplicitously when destroying Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. They will never be able to wash off this shame. The concepts of honour, trust, and decency are not for them.”
Putin blamed this behaviour of Western powers on their long history of colonial rule and enslavement of people of other nations. He said, “Over the long centuries of colonialism, diktat and hegemony, they got used to being allowed everything, got used to spitting on the whole world. It turned out that they treat people living in their own countries with the same disdain, like a master. After all, they cynically deceived them too, tricked them with tall stories about the search for peace, about adherence to the UN Security Council resolutions on Donbass. Indeed, the Western elites have become a symbol of total, unprincipled lies.”
Regarding Russia’s desire to build a multi-polar world order in place of the US-led unipolar Western hegemony, Putin’s speech at Russia’s Federal Assembly stressed, “We firmly defend our interests as well as our belief that in today’s world there should be no division into so-called civilised countries and all the rest and that there is a need for an honest partnership that rejects any exclusivity, especially an aggressive one.”
Putin’s speech at Russia’s Federal Assembly asserted that his government wanted to cooperate and coexist peacefully with Western powers. But Putin complained that the West had simply duped his government. He said, “But in response, we received either an indistinct or hypocritical reaction, as far as words were concerned. But there were also actions: NATO’s expansion to our borders, the creation of new deployment areas for missile defence in Europe and Asia – they decided to take cover from us under an ‘umbrella’ – deployment of military contingents, and not just near Russia’s borders.”
Regarding US military aggression, Putin’s speech at Russia’s Federal Assembly underscored, “I would like to stress –in fact, this is well-known – that no other country has so many military bases abroad as the United States. There are hundreds of them – I want to emphasise this – hundreds of bases all over the world; the planet is covered with them, and one look at the map is enough to see this.”
He further alleged, “The whole world witnessed how they withdrew from fundamental agreements on weapons, including the treaty on intermediate and shorter-range missiles, unilaterally tearing up the fundamental agreements that maintain world peace.”
Explaining why launching a special military operation against Ukraine was necessary for Russia, Putin told the Federal Assembly, “The threat was growing by the day. Judging by the information we received, there was no doubt that everything would be in place by February 2022 for launching yet another bloody punitive operation in Donbass. Let me remind you that back in 2014, the Kiev regime sent its artillery, tanks and warplanes to fight in Donbass.”
He added, “We all remember the aerial footage of airstrikes targeting Donetsk. Other cities also suffered from airstrikes. In 2015, they tried to mount a frontal assault against Donbass again, while keeping the blockade in place and continuing to shell and terrorise civilians. Let me remind you that all of this was completely at odds with the documents and resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council, but everyone pretended that nothing was happening.”
Blaming Ukraine’s neo-Nazi forces and Western powers for the war, Putin said, “Let me reiterate that they were the ones who started this war, while we used force and are using it to stop the war.” Justifying his government’s actions against the neo-Nazis in Ukraine, Putin said, “We are defending human lives and our common home, while the West seeks unlimited power.”
President Putin’s speech at Russia’s Federal Assembly also criticised the Western “military aids” to the Ukrainian regime, which Moscow calls an extremist neo-Nazi force. He blamed the Western powers, especially the US, for ignoring the poor of the world and investing huge amount of money in military supplies.
“It (the Western bloc) has already spent over $150 billion on helping and arming the Kiev regime. To give you an idea, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the G7 countries earmarked about $60 billion in 2020–2021 to help the world’s poorest countries. Is this clear? They spent $150 billion on the war, while giving $60 billion to the poorest countries, despite pretending to care about them all the time, and also conditioning this support on obedience on behalf of the beneficiary countries. What about all this talk of fighting poverty, sustainable development and protection of the environment? Where did it all go? Has it all vanished? Meanwhile, they keep channelling more money into the war effort. They eagerly invest in sowing unrest and encouraging government coups in other countries around the world.”
Criticising US military aggression all over the world, Putin told the Federal Assembly, “According to US experts, almost 900,000 people were killed during wars unleashed by the United States after 2001, and over 38 million became refugees. Please note, we did not invent these statistics; it is the Americans who are providing them. They are now simply trying to erase all this from the memory of humankind, and they are pretending that all this never happened. However, no one in the world has forgotten this or will ever forget it.”
Putin added, “None of them cares about human casualties and tragedies because many trillions of dollars are at stake, of course. They can also continue to rob everyone under the guise of democracy and freedoms, to impose neoliberal and essentially totalitarian values, to brand entire countries and nations, to publicly insult their leaders, to suppress dissent in their own countries and to divert attention from corruption scandals by creating an enemy image.”
Putin’s speech at Russia’s Federal Assembly highlighted how the Ukrainian armed forces draw inspiration from Nazism and Nazi Germany. He said, “Quite recently, a brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was named Edelweiss after a Nazi division whose personnel were involved in deporting Jews, executing prisoners of war and conducting punitive operations against partisans in Yugoslavia, Italy, Czechoslovakia and Greece. We are ashamed to talk about this, but they are not. Personnel serving with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Ukrainian National Guard are particularly fond of chevrons formerly worn by soldiers from Das Reich, Totenkopf (Death’s Head) and Galichina divisions and other SS units. Their hands are also stained with blood. Ukrainian armoured vehicles feature insignia of the Nazi German Wehrmacht.”
Accusing the Western forces of remaining mute about the Ukrainian neo-Nazi forces, Putin said, “Neo-Nazis are open about whose heirs they consider themselves to be. Surprisingly, none of the powers that be in the West are seeing it. Why? Because they – pardon my language – could not care less about it. They do not care who they are betting on in their fight against us, against Russia. In fact, anyone will do as long as they fight against us and our country. Indeed, we saw terrorists and neo-Nazis in their ranks. They would let all kinds of ghouls join their ranks, for God’s sake, as long as they act on their will as a weapon against Russia.”
Putin stressed that his government is not fighting the people of Ukraine but the neo-Nazi powers and ensuring security of Russia’s sovereignty, which is threatened by Western aggression. He said, “We are not at war with the people of Ukraine. I have made that clear many times. The people of Ukraine have become hostages of the Kiev regime and its Western handlers, who have in fact occupied that country in the political, military and economic sense and have been destroying Ukrainian industry for decades now as they plundered its natural resources. This led to social degradation and an immeasurable increase in poverty and inequality.”
Putin accused Western powers of trying to control public opinion by repeatedly spreading false propaganda against Russia, seeing its “defeat as inevitable”. He said, “they too realise it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield and are conducting increasingly aggressive information attacks against us targeting primarily the younger generation.”
Criticising those inside and outside Russia who are helping the West in this war, Putin said, “the West will try to undermine and divide our society and to bet on the fifth columnists who, throughout history, and I want to emphasise this, have been using the same poison of contempt for their own Fatherland and the desire to make money by selling this poison to anyone who is willing to pay for it.”
But Putin said the Russian government, like the Ukrainian government, would not unleash retaliatory attacks on domestic opponents of its special military operations against neo-Nazism.
Putin’s speech at Russia’s Federal Assembly asserted, “Those who have embarked on the road of outright betrayal, committing terrorist and other crimes against the security of our society and the country’s territorial integrity, will be held accountable for this under law. But we will never behave like the Kiev regime and the Western elite, which have been and still are involved in witch hunts. We will not settle scores with those who take a step aside and turn their back on their Motherland. Let this be on their conscience, let them live with this – they will have to live with it.”
The Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics have expressed their desire to join the Russian Federation in a referendum held last year, which Ukraine and Western powers rejected. Regarding these regions, Putin said, “We have already begun and will expand a major socioeconomic recovery and development programme for these new regions within the Federation. It includes restoring production facilities, jobs, and the ports on the Sea of Azov, which again became Russia’s landlocked sea, and building new, modern roads like we did in Crimea, which now has a reliable land transport corridor with all of Russia.”
February 24th marks the one-year anniversary of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, and the way Putin’s speech at Russia’s Federal Assembly railed against Western powers and publicly restated Russia’s views is growing unease among Western powers. In the meantime, Biden’s rhetoric in support of continuing the violence in Ukraine during his trip to Ukraine and Poland proved that the apprehensions expressed by Putin are reasonable, and this conflict may grow manifold in the days to come.
