Five Troubling Takeaways From Putin’s Speech

Judging by the words coming from the Kremlin and what is happening right now across Ukraine, this brutal European war may be about to get a lot worse.

Ilya Pitalev, Sputnik, Kremlin pool via AP
President Putin at Veliky Novgorod, Russia, September 21, 2022. Ilya Pitalev, Sputnik, Kremlin pool via AP

There was more to Vladimir Putin’s short but dense videotaped address this morning than the announcement that more Russian troops will soon be dispatched to Ukraine. That news touched off a frenzy both within the Russian Federation, as anti-war protests erupted in dozens of cities, and outside, with the world’s media zeroing in on desperate Russians snapping up the last available tickets to fly abroad to dodge conscription. 

A closer reading of Mr. Putin’s remarks, reprinted in full by Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, offers additional fodder for concern.

The first thing is what was said first: “The topic of my speech is the situation in the Donbass,” Mr. Putin said, in a terse flipping of the script that only served to underscore how he has been selling his war on Ukraine to the Russians since before it started. By referring to the easternmost portion of Ukraine, where fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces predates February’s full-scale invasion of the country, Mr. Putin set the stage for omitting any reference to the Russian army’s retreat from Kharkiv and from the region around the capital, Kyiv, months prior to that. 

Secondly, he hinted that Turkey may yet have a role to play in any eventual negotiation of a ceasefire. He explicitly said that after the start of the “special military operation,” as the Kremlin calls the war, Kyiv “reacted very positively to our proposals,” but “the peaceful solution did not suit the West” and therefore “after reaching certain compromises, Kyiv was actually given a direct order to disrupt all agreements.”

He gave no clue as to what he actually meant in the last part of that statement, but a cunning statesman like Turkey’s president may detect in Mr. Putin’s evocation of a failed round of peace talks the faintest contours of the desire for a new one.  That said, it is not a credit to President Biden nor Secretary Blinkin that the best hope for peace in Europe now appears to be coming from a Turkish autocrat.

Third, Mr. Putin said that Ukraine’s “use of Western weapons” to attack border settlements in the Russian regions of Belgorod and Kursk had “crossed every line.” As the Sun has reported previously, cross-border shelling and other hostilities have affected those areas since at least as far back as May. It might have taken Moscow a while to complain about those small humiliations publicly, but it just did: “In Washington, London, and Brussels, they are directly pushing Kyiv to transfer military operations to our territory,” Mr. Putin said. No smiles accompanied the accusation. 

Even more sinister is the fourth takeaway, which is his pledge that “if the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will certainly use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people. It’s not a bluff.” 

Beyond that, Roger Cohen of the New York Times made an observation that penetrates into Mr. Putin’s growing paranoia deeper than most. Referendums at Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, though already denounced as shams by Ukraine and the West, could be held as soon as this week and lead to annexation by Russia. “At that point,” Mr. Cohen astutely notes, “a Ukrainian attack next month on the city of Kherson … could, in Russia’s view, be viewed as an attack on Russian soil, justifying a nuclear riposte.”

Takeaway no. 5: It is evident from his closing remarks that regardless of whether Mr. Putin actually feels cornered like the rat on a staircase he says he saw as a young man at St. Petersburg, he means business: “The citizens of Russia can be sure that the territorial integrity of our motherland, our independence and freedom will be ensured, I emphasize this again, with all the means at our disposal.” Yet Ukraine’s courageous counteroffensives at Kherson and elsewhere will not let up.

President Macron said at the UN yesterday, “We seek peace.” Yet to judge by the words coming from the Kremlin and what is happening right now across Ukraine, this brutal European war, of which many are already weary, may be about to get a lot worse.


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