'Half Of His Speech Is Nonsense – Putin Has Outdone Himself'

The political scientist analyzed the message of the head of the Kremlin to the Federal Assembly.

Putin delivered a message to the Russia's Federal Assembly. His performance lasted more than two hours. TASS reported that it was the longest in history. However, no one heard any serious initiatives from him.

The Kremlin has nothing to offer the Russian people? Charter97.org spoke about this with Petro Oleshchuk, a Ukrainian political scientist and professor at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv:

— Apparently, the only meaning of the fact that Putin's appeal was extended for two hours is to disperse the main messages against the background of very long arguments on the topic, for example, ecology. There was a lot about how they destroy landfills, how they will develop tourism around Lake Baikal, about the construction of roads and so on. All this nonsense took more than half of the appeal.

A smaller part are threats to the West, the Armata and Zircon and "we will destroy everyone if necessary". The theses about the need for a new elite and the fact that we will have to raise taxes were lost against the background of all this.

Putin has outdone himself in the absence of a meaningful plan. His speeches were always rather insignificant, but it became special. Once again, they heard promises about traditional values and how to provide Russia with large families that were completely detached from life. That's a "white whale" for Putin now, because he needs as many soldiers as possible to fight with the whole world.

— The loudest thing from Putin's speech is threats to the West in case of sending troops to Ukraine. However, after a short time, he already said that all reports in the Western media about possible Russian aggression were nonsense. Why did he immediately decide to give back?

— If we analyze the structure of his speeches, he rarely expresses any threats directly. Note that any public speeches by Putin are 90% positive. It was the same now.

He has Medvedev, Rogozin, Volodin and a bunch of other people who regularly promise “nuclear ash” for these threats. Putin promises to develop tourism on Lake Baikal, build trans-Eurasian transitions, and is even ready to negotiate with the United States. I repeat, he has specially trained people for threats.

— How realistic do you see the scenario of sending NATO troops to Ukraine? It was discussed at the recent summit in France and Putin recalled it.

— At the moment, the scenario of sending NATO troops to Ukraine looks unlikely. However, there is a scenario voiced recently by the Prime Minister of France that, for example, French calculations of air defence systems or technical personnel may appear in Ukraine. I don't see anything unreal here.

All this is absolutely real if there is political will. Similarly, France has already participated in any military campaign.

Moreover, this could and should be done not even to achieve these goals, but to show all other representatives of the West the fundamental possibility that even if French technical personnel appear in Ukraine (or even air defence crews), this will not change anything at all. After that, it will be possible to talk about larger participation.

I would not say that Ukraine is very interested in the presence of any NATO ground troops. After all, the number of these troops would be small, it would not play a key role.

It would be another matter if NATO aviation entered the war (as it has been repeatedly in the past). This would have changed everything very significantly and, probably, the course of the war.

I believe that it would be reasonable to think about small groups of technicians at the beginning, then about the air defence crews, and then we could think about aviation. This is the scenario that, if there is political will, it is quite feasible.

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