It was a long-awaited speech, three days after the end of the referendums organized in four occupied or partially occupied Ukrainian territories. This Friday, the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin spoke in front of a full room in the Kremlin, while the Russian electoral commission and the local authorities of the four regions announced in the wake of the ballot results largely in favor of ” yes” to annexation.
For Le Parisien, Michel Eltchaninoff, author of the book “In the head of Vladimir Poutine”, deciphers the speech of the Russian head of state. He detects a desire to change the image of Russia and to reverse the roles by accusing the West, mainly the United States.
By insisting on the historical dimension and the common past between Ukraine and Russia, what is Vladimir Putin trying to do?
MICHEL ELTCHANINOFF. Vladimir Putin tried to install a broad and deep vision in the time of the conflict, recalling the history of “Great Russia”, the belonging of Ukrainians to this nation and Western oppression on the rest of the world for centuries. By delivering this speech, Putin wants to install, in a grand narrative, a single vision of history: Russia as the only force resisting the West and colonization.
VIDEO. “Our citizens forever”: Putin formalizes the annexation of four regions of Ukraine
Has he turned a corner in his anti-Western, and even anti-American discourse?
If he held a very violent speech against the West, all the words he said today, he had already used them during speeches in the past. On the other hand, today he has brought them together in one and the same speech, radicalizing them and dramatizing even more the stakes of this conflict. According to him, two camps exist: on the one hand, the Europeans, vassals of the United States, which he considers responsible for the food and energy crises and even for the sabotage of Nord Stream; on the other, the countries that the United States wants to destroy, including Russia. It tries to attract the sympathy of the countries of the South, of China or India, by positioning itself as the armed resistance against the United States.
What place is he trying to give Russia in this conflict?
Vladimir Putin seeks to reverse the roles, to replace Russia in the role of a beleaguered nation, which seeks only to defend itself. He tries to transform this war of conquest into a defensive war, affirming that he wants to defend by all means the territories conquered in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporijjia. For the first time, he also declared that Russia had a “liberating” mission.