{"id":12764,"date":"2023-02-23T15:28:54","date_gmt":"2023-02-23T13:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=12764"},"modified":"2023-02-23T15:28:56","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T13:28:56","slug":"russia-sees-an-irreversible-rift-with-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=12764","title":{"rendered":"Russia sees an irreversible rift with the West"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech confirmed that Russia sees an irreversible rift with the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a way it was an expected speech that simply reflected the fact that after a year of military operations on the territory of Ukraine, military operations that in essence involve not only Russia and Ukraine but also the countries of the West without whose support they cannot Ukrainian resistance would be possible, obviously the West and Russia are on a path of rupture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a strange historical irony, what did not happen even in the days of the previous Cold War, when the West and the USSR were in open enmity, namely the collapse of the institutions surrounding the UN inherited from the period immediately following World War II , now appears to be more likely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not by chance that it is now difficult for the UN Security Council to fully function, nor is Putin’s statement that Russia is withdrawing from the processes surrounding the START treaty (though not the treaty itself), the basic treaty for the limitation of nuclear weapons formally endorsing the already ongoing arms race. After all, as he said, since NATO aims at the strategic defeat of Russia, what is the meaning of the visits to check the nuclear arsenals, while he underlined that both Great Britain and Russia have nuclear weapons aimed at Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Essentially, this was the central tone of Putin’s speech, as well as all his statements since the beginning of the “special military operation”. This scheme assumes that the West has a general hostility towards Russia, including Russian culture and traditions, a hostility that is also reflected in elements such as the questioning of the family or traditional gender roles. In Putin’s scheme, Russia had the right to make the decision, as, as his final phrase was, “the truth is on our side.”<\/p>\n\n\n

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Vladimir Putin: “The West started the war”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this speech Putin chose once again to reiterate that the West is responsible for the war. He based this on the assessment that since the end of 2021 Ukraine was preparing for an attack on Donbas, gathering forces and weapons and having at this level the active support of the West. Against this background, he presented the decision to launch military operations on February 24, 2022 as a preventive defensive action against this planned Ukrainian attack, while underlining that Russia was claiming a peaceful solution to the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This position reflects the longstanding position of Russian diplomacy that the war could have been avoided if the Minsk agreements had actually been implemented and Russia had been given guarantees of Ukraine’s neutrality and non-joining of NATO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this way, Russia is trying to answer those who accuse it of taking the decision for an aggressive war, effectively violating international law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attempt to present an image of an unbending Russia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin has been particularly keen to show that Russia has been virtually unaffected by the war, despite rhetoric in the West that the war has plunged the country into deep crisis. He insisted that even the “theft” of the country’s foreign exchange reserves has not been able to bend the Russian economy, as seen in the small decline in Russia’s GDP. Nor is it a coincidence that he insisted that there was a decline in GDP mainly in the second quarter of 2022 while there was growth in the third and fourth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, he tried to underline that the Russian economy is doing well, that agricultural production has increased, that demand is strengthening and at the same time Russian industry could meet this increased demand, and that government interventions have succeeded in stabilizing the economy and launching a process of modernization of Russian infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He specifically emphasized that Russia does not need to resort to borrowing from abroad to finance a development strategy, as both public finances and the state of banks within Russia allow sufficient financing, while relatively low inflation allows and loans with lower interest rates in Russia<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, he did not fail to show that he is not the representative of the oligarchs, criticizing businessmen who took their capital abroad or who turned their profits into expensive yachts and other luxury expenses. In this context, he again pointed out the need to review the articles of the criminal code concerning corruption. This was combined with a polemic on how initially a certain version of entrepreneurship turned to the West, contributed to the privatization of state wealth, and cheap borrowing instead of investing in Russia itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against the same backdrop of his emphasis on internal economic restructuring, Putin also highlighted planning for major transit corridors within Russia to make better use of ports on the Black Sea and the Azov Sea, a move that has on his horizon the interconnection with similar Chinese plans under the One Belt One Road strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, at the same time he underlined the increases that have occurred in salaries and pensions as an indication of the “popular” face of his government<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To give an image of stability, he did not fail to underline that the elections at the local and regional level will be held normally in 2024 and in accordance with the provisions of Russian legislation.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Meaning of Partial Withdrawal from the START Agreement<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin’s announcement that Russia is partially withdrawing from the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, START. Putin emphasized that when this agreement was signed, Russia was in a different situation and in a different relationship with the US. He even accused the US of having itself abandoned the basic principles of the START agreement on the indivisibility of security and the interdependence between strategic and defensive weapons, since it abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this sense, he made it clear that he now considers Russia to be in open rivalry with the West and therefore has the right to develop all the weapons systems that will allow it to defend its security and integrity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, even before the war, Russia had already made it clear that it was developing its weapons systems, with an emphasis on hypersonic missiles, while recently the US is considering how to upgrade its own nuclear arsenal. In any case, for some time now Russia has stopped accepting visits by inspectors for its nuclear arsenal, visits that are part of the START agreement. And of course the order to inspect the readiness of Russia’s nuclear arsenal was also a clear message to the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new landscape is consolidating<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is clear that Putin in this speech wanted to speak to two audiences. First of all, to speak inside his country and convince that things are going in a better direction, in a society that is already suffering the effects of military operations, even indirectly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He knows that he may have a general legitimacy, but there is also resentment. Mainly he tried to show that he has a vision for the Russian economy, with an emphasis on productive self-sufficiency, on social cohesion, on education (as he also promised educational reform), other than the attempt to integrate with the West, a vision with greater prosperity. After all, even the emphasis on a neoconservative social vision, in this projection of a pursuit of cohesion against what he believed to be the “moral crisis” of the West, was overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, he emphasized, again in the same context, the integration steps of the regions that were now included in the Russian territory. And of course a coherent element of his speech that Russia acted on the basis of real threats and data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other audience was obviously the West. He did not deviate from the general tone of all his public statements of late, which is that Russia will continue operations until its objectives are achieved and mainly sought to send a message to the West not to escalate its own involvement in war, to the extent that Russia if threatened is ready to use any means, including its nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a way, this was also an address to the West’s perplexity regarding how long to prolong the war, making it clear that the limit to prolongation is uncontrolled escalation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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