“D’one side, I am reassured that the president has not said anything about a new wave of mobilization or a more obvious participation of all of us, here in Russia, in this war”, confesses Lara, 26, commercial in a state bank. “But, on the other hand, the aims of this war are still not clear and we don’t even know when we will get out of it! she sighs, annoyed.
Like many Muscovites, Lara watched Vladimir Putin’s speech intently on her mobile phone from her workplace. Like a majority of the Russian population, worried and bewildered by the invasion of Ukraine a year ago, the young woman waited with anguish for this speech before the two chambers of Parliament, especially since it had not taken place at the end of 2022, as the Constitution nevertheless required.
“Second class citizens”
The river speech – the longest of all his speeches to the two Chambers – hardly brought any new elements, except at the end, when the Head of State, with a hoarse voice but with a look and tone forcefully, announced that Russia was suspending its participation in the New Start agreement with the United States on strategic nuclear disarmament.
He justified his decision by the flights of drones – “modernized with the help of the West” – above two Russian airports in December, that of Engels and that of Ryazan. To add, almost mischievous and sure of its effect, that if the United States was about to proceed first to new nuclear tests, Russia also reserved the right to proceed with it. “That moment marked me, underlines Lara, because it is as if the president evoked the cold war…”
READ ALSOWashington responds to Putin and denounces the “absurdity” of his speechThe young woman was surprised by the president’s insistence on permanently dividing Russian society between “ours” and “the others”. He did this in particular with regard to the businessmen who left the country following the war. “No one is going to complain to them for having lost the money they deposited in bank accounts in the West” where they are, ultimately, only “second class citizens”, affirmed Vladimir Putin, who does not lose no longer an opportunity to show satisfaction with the “purification” of Russian society induced by this war.
New elites
Another revealing moment: when the Russian president, almost beside himself, mentioned the name of a new brigade of Ukrainian alpine hunters officially named “Edelweiss” (the name of a mountain flower), according to him in reference to the division Nazi who bore the same name. According to Lara, many Russians, even against the war, may wonder why this denomination was chosen by the Ukrainian president.
To the great displeasure of the young woman, and of an entire young population far from politics, Vladimir Putin did not breathe a word on the means of stopping this war, nor on what he proposed to succeed in living under these conditions. radically different.
READ ALSOWar in Ukraine: between mines and bombs, with the “soldiers” of electricityIn the room where the President was speaking, scores of war invalids and soldiers in uniform, their medals clearly visible, were repeatedly shown during the live television broadcast on all state channels, as illustrating this change of the elites that Putin calls for.
The old elites, too liberal in the 1990s – when “Western advisers came to give us lessons, remember? “, he slipped –, according to Putin, were mistaken and were not patriotic enough. Here are the new elites, seemed to say the Russian head of state, whose remarks were immediately illustrated by the director of the retransmission.
No mention of the human cost of the conflict
Seated alongside Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, his Defense colleague Sergei Shoigu kept a closed and impassive face throughout the speech. Ramzan Kadyrov, the president of Chechnya, very talkative on his Twitter feed, did not seem to be present, when he had been announced.
The mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin, suspected of not being a cantor of war, and who did everything to ensure that his city sent very few mobilized to participate in the “special military operation”, was not shown either. .
READ ALSOGérard Araud – The war in Ukraine or the advent of a multipolar worldNo mention was made by Vladimir Putin of the human cost of the conflict, except to thank those who “heroically” suffer from it. While some seem to have appreciated that the speech was neither too belligerent nor too extreme, the “turbopatriots” immediately criticized it on certain Telegram channels. Yesterday expectantly, Russian stock markets fell. As a sign of confidence, this Tuesday, they went up during the president’s speech.
The official RIA-Novosti press agency did the accounts: the room applauded 53 times and stood up 4 times. But not when Vladimir Putin suddenly mentioned the suspension of the nuclear agreement. At this precise moment, a single man, in military uniform and filmed from behind by the director, got up from his seat, but he was not followed by the room, proof that the atmosphere was circumspect.