“These are the facts! » With a determined gaze, a firm voice, Vladimir Putin repeated this expression several times on Friday afternoon, September 30, when, facing the national elite gathered in the Kremlin, he launched into a violent and long anti- West before formalizing the annexation of four Ukrainian regions.
Its objective: to demonstrate that the “special military operation” launched last February in Ukraine is part of a much broader confrontation. The Russian president claims to defend Russia against Western countries, which he has accused of all evils.
« The West is ready to do anything to preserve the neocolonial system that allows it to parasitize and, in fact, plunder the whole world. They want to see us as a colony “, denounced Vladimir Putin, castigating in particular the “ satanism behind the declining social mores of Europeans. ” We will continue to defend our values. »
Under the gilded chandeliers of the great white Saint-Georges room, Vladimir Putin addressed an audience of parliamentarians, regional governors, ministers, religious leaders and owners of public companies. It was a question of signing the annexation agreements with the self-proclaimed leaders of the four regions of Ukraine which, wholly or partly controlled by Moscow, “voted” this week for their attachment to Russia during “referendums” described as masquerades by Western capitals.
Western “dictates”
After the speech and the signing ceremony, the head of the Kremlin asked the four leaders to take him by the hands. And, together under the applause of the room, they chanted: “Russia! »
Outside, on the pavement of Red Square, festivities were to follow in the evening, with concerts, fireworks, and undoubtedly a new intervention by Vladimir Putin in front of a tide of Russian flags.
In his first speech, the president did not repeat his threats of the previous week when, on Wednesday September 21, he said he was ready to use “all the means at our disposal” pour “protect Russia and our people”, nuclear weapons included.
However, it announces a general confrontation with the West, in particular with the United States. “After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West decided that we all had to put up with its dictatesinsisted the president. In 1991, the West expected Russia not to recover and fall apart on its own. It almost happened: we remember the terrible 1990s, marked by hunger, cold and despair. But Russia held on, regained its strength, and regained its rightful place in the world. »
The West lies like Goebbels
The Russian president accuses Western countries, led by the United States, of having constantly hatched plans aimed at weakening him. “What they have always dreamed of is to break up our statehe assures. They simply cannot accept the fact that there is such a vast country in the world, with its territory, its natural wealth and its resources, with people who cannot and do not want to live according to someone’s orders. another. »
Vladimir Putin also accused the West of leading “hybrid warfare” against Russia and, more broadly, to use the “Blackmail and Fear” to dominate the world. He compared “western propaganda”with “its ocean of illusions, myths and fakes”to the lies of Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s chief propagandist.
These comparisons are part of the continuity of the speeches of the head of the Kremlin for seven months against “fascist regime” in Ukraine. Before warning: “Russia will take its responsibilities before the international community. » A conclusion which, in itself, could amount to a declaration of counter-attack against the West.