"Ahead of U.S. elections, the Russian
leader V. V. Putin sounded like some right-wing Westerners, saying his fight is not with
those in the West who hold “traditional values.”
President Vladimir V. Putin declared on Thursday that
Russia’s battle was with “Western elites,” not with the West itself, in a
speech seemingly aimed more at winning over political conservatives abroad than
his own citizens.
Mr. Putin, addressing an annual
foreign policy conference outside Moscow, appeared intent on capitalizing on
political divisions in the United States and its allies that have only
heightened since they began showering Ukraine with military aid.
Many of the Russian leader’s themes
were familiar, but they took on particular resonance given the coming midterm
elections in the United States and growing discontent in Europe over the costs
of the war.
“There are at least two Wests,” Mr. Putin said.
One, he said, is a West of “traditional, mainly Christian
values” for which Russians feel kinship.
But, he said, “there’s another West — aggressive,
cosmopolitan, neocolonial, acting as the weapon of the neoliberal elite,” and
trying to impose its “pretty strange” values on everyone else. He peppered his
remarks with references to “dozens of genders” and “gay parades.”
Mr. Putin, as he often does, portrayed Russia as threatened
by the possible expansion of NATO — and the values of its liberal democracies —
to countries like Ukraine that were once part of the Soviet Union.
He denied that Moscow was preparing
to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine. “We have no need to do this,” he
said. “There’s no sense for us, neither political nor military.”
It is Mr. Putin himself, however,
who has raised that prospect, as have other senior Russian officials.
“This is a trick — it shouldn’t make anyone
relax,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political analyst, noting that Mr.
Putin has blamed the West and its support for an independent Ukraine. “His goal
is to show that escalation is the product of Western policies.”
In his nearly four-hour speech and
question-and-answer session, the Russian leader did not mention the U.S.
midterm elections taking place on Nov. 8. But his barbs against “elites” were a
reminder that he still hopes to build alliances with supporters of Russia in
the West.
In the United States, Republican leaders have said that
should they regain control of the House and Senate, President Biden can no
longer expect a “blank check” when it comes to sending military aid to Ukraine,
despite strong popular backing for
that aid. Even some Democrats, faced with restive constituents, have
appeared to distance themselves from support for the Zelenski's effort.
And Mr. Putin’s attack on “elites” may also play well in the
United States, where many Republican candidates have rallied voters by
denouncing leaders they say are out of touch, and their liberal approaches to
divisive social issues.
“In the United States,” he said, “there’s a very strong part
of the public who maintain traditional values, and they’re with us. We know
about this.”
In the question-and-answer session,
the foreign policy analyst moderating the event, Fyodor Lukyanov, pressed Mr.
Putin on setbacks, and said there was a widespread view that Russia had
“underestimated the enemy.”
“Honestly, society doesn’t
understand — what’s the plan?” Mr. Lukyanov asked.
Mr. Putin brushed aside the implicit criticism, arguing that
Ukraine’s fierce resistance showed that he was right to launch the military operation.
The longer Russia had waited, he said, “the worse it would have been for us,
the more difficult and more dangerous.”
Mr. Putin also repeated Russia’s
claims that Ukraine was preparing to detonate a “dirty bomb” to spread
radioactive material on its territory and then blame Moscow. Ukraine and the
West say that the claims — for which Russia has offered no evidence — are
baseless disinformation that could be used as a pretext by the Kremlin to use a
nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb.
Ms. Stanovaya, the political
analyst, said Mr. Putin appeared to be trying to harness worldwide
anti-establishment sentiment.
“There’s now a sense that he is
building an anti-Western coalition on a global scale,” she said. “He doesn’t
think he’s been backed into a corner. He thinks he’s a witness to the birth of
a new world.”
Mr. Putin himself said he was
confident that eventually, the West would be forced to engage Russia and other
world powers in talks on a future world order.
“I always believed, and believe, in
the power of common sense,” Mr. Putin said. “I am therefore convinced that
sooner or later, the new centers of the multipolar world order and the West
will have to start a conversation of equals.”
As Western leaders have tried to punish Moscow with crushing
sanctions, Russian leaders have sought to build new ties to other nations and
strengthen existing ones. On Thursday, the government of one of those nations,
China, an increasingly important ally, offered a full-throated endorsement of
Mr. Putin’s leadership.
In a telephone call with his Russian counterpart, Foreign
Minister Wang Yi said that any attempt to block the progress between the two
countries would never succeed, the Chinese ministry said in a statement.
In Ukraine on Thursday, Russian
forces pursued their drone and missile assaults on infrastructure, leaving
hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without power. And the Ukrainian military
said it was increasing the number of soldiers near its northern border with
Belarus, where it noted what it said were unusual troop movements.
Brig. Gen. Oleksii Hromov said Kyiv
had no new evidence to suggest that Belarusian or Russian forces were preparing
a strike force, but concern has mounted in recent days after the Kremlin dispatched thousands of soldiers
to Belarus.
Moscow used Belarus, its closest
military and political ally, and the movement of Russian soldiers there is
closely monitored by Ukraine and its Western allies.
The more immediate concern for
Ukrainian officials is the continuing use of Belarus as a launching pad for
aerial assaults.
Russia has deployed its troops to
airfields in Belarus, and this week, it used Belarusian territory to carry out
10 launches of Iranian-made drones, General Hromov said.”
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