With his appearance in the Kremlin, Putin obviously wants to repeat his triumph of 2014. He doesn’t succeed. President Zelenskyy’s reaction far outweighs the farce in the Kremlin.
March 18, 2014 was a special day for Vladimir Putin. In his historic Crimea speech in the Kremlin, he announced the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula. It was the moment of the greatest victory for the Russian President: the annexation of Crimea was against international law. But a significant portion of the people of the occupied peninsula cheered anyway. In Russia, too, Putin was more popular than ever because of the annexation.
Eight years later, in the same Kremlin hall, Putin wanted to repeat that moment of victory – with a new speech on the annexation of occupied Ukrainian territories. But the circumstances are different. Just these days the Ukrainian army is reporting major new victories at the front. The Russian troops around the town of Lyman in the north of the Donetsk region are threatened with encirclement. None of the annexed Ukrainian territories are fully controlled by the Russian army. No one in Russia, not even the biggest proponents of “special operations,” still believes that it’s really going according to plan. The supposedly “partial” mobilization is bringing hundreds of thousands of Russians out of the country.
In view of the current Ukrainian counter-offensive, Putin’s speech should be seen as an act of desperation. It is no coincidence that the call for negotiations was almost his only clear message – but of course Putin does not want to talk to Kyiv about the newly annexed areas. This shows once again that the Russian army urgently needs a break to recover and prepare a new attack. Because the Ukrainian armed forces are currently conducting successful negotiations – at the front.
Unlike a few days ago, Putin didn’t make a clear nuclear threat today – along the lines of “I don’t bluff.” The Kremlin chief repeated again that Russia would “defend its own country with all possible methods” and he spoke of a precedent set by the USA with the use of an atomic bomb in Japan in 1945. However, there was no clear ultimatum. Other questions also remain unanswered: for example, how Russia intends to define the borders of the Cherson and Zaporizhia districts. The so-called People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk were recognized by Russia in February within the full borders of the corresponding Ukrainian oblasts, although the rulers there did not control such a large area at the time.
Putin devoted most of his bewildering speech to the West, as if what he saw as US colonial policy somehow justified the bombing of Mariupol or the Bucha crimes. It is not the first time that the Russian President has made himself the spokesman for all those fighting against the alleged dictatorship of the West. He railed against the influence of the LGBT community and what Western right-wing populists call “gender madness,” spoke of Germany and Japan being occupied by the United States, and indirectly accused Washington of sabotaging the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines. None of this is new in itself, but in this agglomeration, Putin’s speech on the annexation surpassed even his Ukraine speech on February 21 in its absurdity, in which the Russian president denied the neighboring state’s right to exist.
Putin is now more obsessed than ever with his fight against what he calls the unipolar world. But his problem is that even his country’s official partners, including within the post-Soviet space, such as Kazakhstan, are increasingly distancing themselves from Russia. Even China is in no hurry to offer any real support to the Kremlin except rhetorical jabs at the US. And so Putin’s “special operation” leads to the economic and military weakening of Russia – a world power dependent on drone deliveries from Iran. Putin does everything to achieve the opposite of what he actually wants.
Today’s speech shows what was implied when the mobilization was announced: the end of his regime could be closer than many people think. The Ukrainian counter-offensive will continue, and the fact that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy applied for NATO membership in response to the annexation of the Ukrainian territories and excluded any negotiations with Russia while Putin is President weighs much more significantly today than the farce in the Kremlin. The clock is ticking for Putin. He will probably no longer be able to hold a new Crimean speech.
