President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday vowed to press onward with Russia’s one-year war in Ukraine and railed against the West for a litany of wrongdoings, including allegedly escalating the war by offering Kyiv support.
In his first wartime state-of-the-nation address, Putin relied on familiar talking points as he pledged to continue his offensive on Ukraine that started with a failed attempt to capture Kyiv and has gradually slowed to a brutal war of attrition in eastern Ukraine.
“Step by step, we will carefully and systematically solve the aims that face us,” Putin said ahead of the anniversary of the war on Feb. 24.
Addressing lawmakers from both chambers of Russia’s parliament and other high-level guests that included soldiers, Putin echoed his earlier claims that Western countries’ actions forced Russia to invade Ukraine one year ago.
“Russia did its best to solve the problem in Ukraine peacefully, but the statements of Western leaders turned out to be fraudulent and untrue,” Putin said, referring to the Ukrainian theater of war as “historical Russian land.”
“They were dragging their feet […] they were playing with people’s lives.”
“It’s them who unleashed the war. And we’re using force to stop it,” he said to rapturous applause, using the word that Russian authorities effectively outlawed in favor of what they call a “special military operation.”
“They let the genie out of the bottle [and] plunged entire regions into chaos.”
Pointing to the West’s ongoing military aid for Ukraine, Putin warned that “the more long-range Western systems are delivered into Ukraine, the further we’ll have to push the threat from our borders.”
“The responsibility for fueling the Ukrainian conflict, for its escalation, for the number of victims… lies completely with Western elites,” Putin said.
He also criticized the hundreds of thousands of Russians who had fled the country since the start of the invasion, but said the authorities “won’t resemble the Kyiv regime and engage in a witch hunt.”
He reiterated his claim that Western countries that sanctioned Russia over the war “haven’t achieved anything anywhere and won’t achieve it.”
