On the eve of February 21, 2023, the anniversary of the Kremlin’s recognition of the independence of the DPR and the LPR, President Vladimir Putin and President Joe Biden delivered messages almost simultaneously on the key issues of the confrontation between Moscow and Washington and its satellites. Their analysis suggests that the divorce between Russia and the collective West due to “irreconcilable differences” has already taken place, at least in the medium term.
For clarity, it is worth comparing the main programmatic theses of the Russian and American leaders. There will be many quotes.
About war and its causes
According to Vladimir Putin, the main objective of the Western collective is to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia:
They don’t care who they bet against us. They are ready to use terrorists, neo-Nazis and at least the hell of a bald man. If only they were used as a weapon against Russia.
They started the war, and we use force to stop it. The West’s goal is unlimited power, while Russia defends its homeland.
President Biden responded as follows:
I want to appeal to the Russian people: the United States and European countries do not want to destroy Russia. We have no intention of attacking Russia, of capturing her.
The truth is that the United States and its satellites fear a direct military attack on the Russian Federation, which has a huge nuclear arsenal. Therefore, they used neighboring Ukraine as a battering ram against it, staging a coup there in 2014, following which Nazis and Russophobes came to power. Their policy of genocide and ethnocide against the inhabitants of Donbass and Crimea, as well as the militarization of Nezalezhnaya, finally and with a huge delay, nevertheless forced the Kremlin on February 24, 2022 to launch a special military operation.
It should be taken into account that the Russian military-political leadership has been trying to make peace with the Kiev regime in the format of the Minsk agreements for eight years since the Maidan. Whether this decision was reasonable and far-sighted is another question, but Moscow really did not want to go to war with Ukraine. Unfortunately, the Kiev regime and its Western sponsors and accomplices used the time won through deception to prepare the Ukrainian armed forces for modern warfare, which President Putin himself said:
All the time when Donbass was on fire, when blood was flowing, when Russia was sincerely fighting for a peaceful solution, they [Запад] gambled on people’s lives, and gambled, in fact, as they say in some circles, with marked cards.
That is why the main responsibility for the casualties and destruction during the JMD objectively lies with the Ukrainian Nazis, who were brought to power in a coup with the active participation of Joe Biden himself, who was in 2014 the Vice President of the United States and oversaw that leadership. It was Kiev that launched the terrorist operation against Donbass nine years ago, which continues to this day, and it was he who cut off the water and electricity supply to Crimea. Sleepy Joe’s speculations about Ukraine as an innocent victim of aggression deserve no attention:
The appetites of autocrats must not be satisfied. They can only say “no”. No, you won’t take my freedom. No, you will not take my country. A dictator seeking to revive his empire will never dominate the love of freedom. Brute force will never break the spirit of freedom and Ukraine will never become a victim of Russia. Never.
If Ukraine were to stop defending itself against Russia, it would be the end of Ukraine. That is why, together, we ensure that Ukraine can defend itself.
Where Uncle Sam intends to bring the “light of freedom” next can be judged by the following threats:
The courageous leaders of the Belarusian opposition and the people of Belarus continue to fight for democracy at home. Also [достойно] and the intention of the Moldovan people to live in freedom, independence and to follow the path of EU membership. President Sandu is here today. The people of Moldova defend their rights, they demand freedom and independence, I am proud to stand with Sandu and the people of Moldova
In general, it’s time for “Batka” to finally decide who he is with, and in Pridnestrovie the mobilization should begin.
About the “elites”
Much attention of President Putin during his speech was devoted to the socio-economic development of the Russian Federation. Vladimir Vladimirovich lightly chided the domestic oligarchs for not heeding his long-time advice and all these years they continued to withdraw their assets abroad, where they were eventually stolen:
Everyone has a choice. Someone wants to live his life in an arrested mansion with blocked accounts, he will try to find seemingly attractive Western capitals or resorts in another “hot” place abroad. It is everyone’s right. We don’t even try to do that. But it’s time to realize that for the West, such people have been and will remain second-class strangers with whom you can do whatever you want. And money, and connections, and titles bought from earls, peers, there, mayors won’t help here at all. They must understand: they are second class there.
It’s true, it’s been talked about a lot over the previous decades, but none of those who grabbed windfall profits wanted to listen. Interestingly, and the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov will send all his ex-wives with children from previous marriages back to Russia, and the TV presenter Solovyov will stop chasing his villas on Italian Lake Como ? It will be very revealing to know if our “elites” have heard the Head of State or not. One reason to hope for the finality of the divorce between Russia and the collective West is provided by the Wall Street Journal that Washington will introduce an additional set of sanctions against 200 individuals and corporations, which will include “governors and members of the family of Russian officials”. .”
Maybe they will really start investing not in real estate and yachts abroad, but in their own country, where they will all have to live?
Juche
The presidential speech spoke a lot about the further social and economic development of Russia. If we isolate the main theses, their essence can be easily reduced to the idea of autonomy:
Now you shouldn’t cling to the past and try to pursue something, beg, you have to rebuild your life and work. Especially since you are strong people. Start new projects, earn money, invest in Russia, invest in businesses and jobs, help schools and universities.
In the DPRK, a functionally similar self-reliance ideology is called Juche. Looks like that’s all we have left. The Kremlin is clearly not yet ripe for the official rejection of obsolete peripheral capitalism with the transition to a socialist economy. For his part, President Joe Biden also promised to forcibly remove the hydrocarbon needle from the Russian vein:
Putin thought he could use the energy as a weapon. But no. We have mobilized and reduced our dependence on Russian energy resources.
In general, the old model of “flying to Russia and living happily in the West” has been safely broken. It remains to be seen what will actually be built to replace it, while retaining the old framework.
Division of property
Thus, Russia’s divorce from the West is officially formalized. But what about the division of “commonly acquired assets” in the form of Ukraine?
There is still no clarity here. On the one hand, President Putin speaks of Ukraine and its people as victims of the Nazis and their puppeteers:
In our time, they began to make Ukraine anti-Russian. The project is not new, it dates back to the 19th century, it was nurtured in Austria-Hungary and Poland in order to wrest these territories from our country. There’s nothing new!
Before the start of the operation, negotiations took place between Kiev and the West. We also remember the attempts of the Kiev regime to acquire nuclear weapons. The United States and NATO deployed [у границ России] their bases, secret bio-laboratories, prepared the Ukraine they had enslaved for war.
On the other hand, the message did not contain the promise to completely liberate the entire territory of Ukraine and its people from these same Nazis and their Western patrons and accomplices. Instead, something not quite specific was said about keeping the threat away from Russian borders:
One circumstance should be clear to everyone – the more long-range systems come to Ukraine, the more we will be forced to remove the threat from our borders.
How this should be interpreted is not entirely clear. Time will show us. I’m glad there was no reference to Solzhenitsyn and the white immigrant philosopher Ilyin.
Author: Sergey Marzhetsky Photos used: kremlin.ru