Putin Speech Takes Swipe at U.S.-Led International Order

"Russian President Vladimir Putin's combative address Monday from the Kremlin was a nearly hourlong recitation of decades of historical grievances and an unmistakable challenge by Moscow to the post-Cold War international order dominated by the West.

The speech, ostensibly aimed at recognizing the independence of two breakaway statelets that Russia carved from Ukraine in 2014, outlined Mr. Putin's view that Ukraine was a historical accident that the U.S. has turned into a launchpad to attack Russia.

"The United States and NATO have begun the shameless development of the territory of Ukraine as a theater of military operations," Mr. Putin said, seated at a desk flanked by Russian flags.

While he left his precise intentions toward Ukraine unclear Monday, he expounded the Russian view that Ukraine's borders were drawn arbitrarily by the Soviet Union's founder, Vladimir Lenin, and only exist now because of the U.S.S.R.'s hurried breakup in 1991.

Mr. Putin said those borders ignored deep civilizational ties between Russia and Ukraine and questioned the legitimacy of an independent Ukrainian state, saying: "Ukraine for us is not just a neighboring country, it is an integral part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space." Mr. Putin addressed his speech not only to Russia, but also to "our compatriots in Ukraine."

Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, a move backed in a referendum by an overwhelming majority of the population and quickly recognized by Russia. Ukrainians have increasingly sought to forge a separate identity from Russia, particularly since Moscow seized portions of the country in 2014.

The Russian president has railed against what he calls U.S.-led efforts to turn Ukraine into a Western-facing democracy, claiming Russia's ties with Ukraine gave it a unique right to intervene there.

"Right now I have my doubts that the European political elite and diplomats understand the full complex of problems they will run into" as Mr. Putin works to advance his agenda, said Aleksei Chesnakov, a former adviser to the Kremlin on foreign policy. "He wants more decisive steps militarily, politically, and economically. He is ready."

Mr. Putin's address veered from assessments of Ukrainian economic policies to a recounting of debates between Lenin and former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to a theoretical estimate of flight times for ballistic missiles from an eastern Ukrainian city to Moscow. The speech echoed years of complaints by Mr. Putin that the West was trying to tear Ukraine away from Russia. He was scarred by the 2004 Orange Revolution, when mass protests overturned a tainted election and vaulted a pro-Western candidate to the presidency over one of Mr. Putin's proteges.

Another revolution in 2014 ousted a pro-Russian president and led the Kremlin to restore Russian control in Crimea and try to foment pro-Russian protests across the south and east of Ukraine, a territory that Mr. Putin then referred to by its Czarist-era name, Novorossiya. Those protests were largely put down by local law enforcement or pro-Ukrainian activists, with only the protests in Donetsk and Luhansk escalating into warfare.

Mr. Putin said "external forces" had been promoting governments in Kyiv that have been striving to dissolve the traditional bonds between Russia and Ukraine and "distort the consciousness and historical memory of millions of people, entire generations living in Ukraine."

Mr. Putin have long tarred pro-Western forces in Ukraine as nationalists and sought to portray radical groups, as a guiding force behind government policy. Successive Ukrainian governments have pursued closer security, political and trade ties with the West, policies Mr. Putin has decried as anti-Russian.

The Russian president has for years appealed to shared cultural ties, from language to religion, in calling Ukraine and Russia "brother nations."

"Ukraine has become a colony of puppets," Mr. Putin said in his address. "Ukrainians squandered not only everything we gave them during the U.S.S.R., but even everything they inherited from the Russian empire."" [1]

1. World News: Putin Speech Takes Swipe at U.S.-Led International Order
Marson, James; Gershkovich, Evan; Cullison, Alan. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 22 Feb 2022: A.8.