Month: November 2023

Russian President Vladimir Putin has again railed at the West during a speech in which he said that Russia was “at the forefront of building a fairer world order.”

Set against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine that he started but did not mention by name, Putin told the World Russian People’s Council plenary session on Tuesday that Moscow was engaged in a “fight for sovereignty and justice” which was “one of national liberation.”

During the video address, whose transcript was released on the Kremlin website, Putin praised how the “Russian world… has blocked the way of those who aspired to world domination and exceptionalism.”

“We are now fighting not just for Russia’s freedom but for the freedom of the whole world,” he said, describing how “the dictatorship of one hegemon is becoming decrepit.”

President Vladimir Putin speaks during the 15th World Russian People’s Congress at the State Kremlin Palace in Moscow on November 28, 2023. Putin spoke of a “new world order” during the event. Getty Images

Putin has repeatedly pitched the war in Ukraine as a proxy battle between Moscow and the West and in the face of U.S.- led sanctions has positioned himself as leading a pivot away from the current world order towards Asia and the so-called “global south.”

Name-checking the 1917 Russian Revolution, the civil war that followed and the break up of the USSR in 1991, Putin said people “are still paying now, decades later, for the miscalculations made at that time.”

In his view, these events had led to “separatist illusions” as well as “a policy of artificial, forced division in this large Russian nation, a triune of Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians.”

“We will never forget these mistakes and should not repeat them…any attempt to sow ethnic or religious discord, to split our society is betrayal, a crime against all of Russia. We will never allow anyone to divide Russia.”

“It is our country that is now at the forefront of building a fairer world order,” he said. “Without a sovereign and strong Russia, no lasting and stable international system is possible.”

“We know the threat we are opposing. Russophobia and other forms of racism and neo-Nazism have almost become the official ideology of Western ruling elites,” said Putin, who has given “denazification” of Ukraine as one reason for his invasion.

Putin also said the West “has no need” for Russia which “they want to dismember and plunder” and warned that if there is “outside interference or provocations to incite ethnic or religious conflict as acts of aggression against our country… we will respond accordingly.”

A nuclear threat has hovered over the war in Ukraine and Putin and the Kremlin have sent mixed messages about unconventional weapons, whose use are a regular talking point on Kremlin propaganda channels, especially if it is deemed that Russia faces an existential risk.

“The Russian world and Russia itself do not and cannot exist without Russians as an ethnicity, without the Russian people,” he added.

The World Russian People’s Council is marking the 30th anniversary of its founding with the aim of discussing Russia’s place in the world.

It is headed by the Patriarch of Moscow Kirill, who has faced condemnation from the global Orthodox Church for his support for Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

Putin addressed the church’s primate directly in his speech and praised his work “to bring about the spiritual revival of Russia,” which included a push for “family values” in which women would be encouraged to have more children to address the country’s demographic crisis.

Commenting on Putin’s speech, risk analyst Alex Kokcharev posted on X (formerly Twitter) a split image of the Russian president and a still from a film based on the George Orwell novel 1984.

“Strong 1984 vibes,” he wrote.”Putin delivered a speech in which he reiterated his vision for a ‘new world order’ in which Russia has the right to conquer all countries previously ruled by the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union.”

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