State of the Nation speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin on the war in Ukraine

Euskaraz irakurri: Putinek “izoztutzat” eman du AEBrekin arma nuklearrei buruz sinatutako azken ituna

The President of Russia, Vladimir Putinhas addressed both houses of parliament in a speech on the state of the nation, in which he has defended the invasion of Ukraine as a way to defend the people of Donbas and guarantee the security of the Federation against the West: “They started this war and we used force to stop that war.” Moreover, it has announced that the last nuclear weapons treaty signed with the United States is “frozen”.

“To ensure the security of our country, to remove the threat posed by the neo-Nazi regime that emerged in Ukraine after the 2014 coup, it was decided to conduct a special military operation. Step by step, carefully and consistently, we will achieve the tasks we face,” Putin said in an internal speech.

The Russian president has assured that he has “done everything possible to peacefully resolve the Donbas problem” after eight years of war, but has criticized the West for responding “ambiguously” to its earlier requests for dialogue , and has blamed the United States for the failed negotiations since 2014.

“The United States has brought its bases and biological laboratories to our borders. They wanted to wage a major war through the regime in Kiev. Today they publicly confess it,” said Putin, recalling the Atlantic interventions in Yugoslavia, Iraq. Libya and Syria. “The wider the range of Western weapons sent to Ukraine, the more we will have to strengthen our borders” added.

“If the United States carries out nuclear tests, so will we”

Putin took advantage of the speech to announce that Russia is “freezing” the Strategic Offensive Reduction Treaty, though “it will not give up”, before renegotiating it, given the Western interest in a “strategic defeat” of the Russian Federation.

The president believes that “strategic parity cannot be broken” in nuclear weapons, assuring that many of them expire, so “if the United States conducts nuclear tests, we will do the same.”

“Nuclear weapons are aimed at Russia. Their statements confirm this. We cannot ignore these trends,” he warned. In addition, Putin has reminded that not only the North American and Eurasian powers have nuclear weapons, and in Europe he has mentioned the United Kingdom and France.

The leader of the Russian Federation also had words for the citizens of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, Ukrainian regions recently annexed to Russia, where “we continue to implement a social development project: the rehabilitation of factories, of the ports of Azov, the inland sea of ​​Russia, and new roads, as we have done in Crimea”.

New scenarios for the Russian economy after Western sanctions

After references to the war, Putin focused his speech on Russia’s economic response to Western sanctions: “The West is fighting with us militarily, propagandistically and economically, but has achieved nothing at all and is going to achieve nothing at all“.

In addition, Putin recalled that the greatest impact of the sanctions is being felt in European economies. In Europe, “prices are rising, factories are closing, industry is suffering… They are explaining to citizens that the blame lies with the Russians,” he said.

Internally, Putin has watched the evolution of the Russian economy after the fall of the Soviet Union, and before the closed doors of the West in the 21st century, the Russian president has confirmed that his country is now looking to Asia, where plans to build ” new international corridors”.

He has also spent time on the “humiliation” of the West, referring to a “mental catastrophe” in which he mixed pedophilia with same-sex marriage.