A threat to the West and money for his own citizens: Putin’s speech was not only very long – the Kremlin boss also made a lot of promises to the Russian people, he says ARD correspondent Ina Ruck.
Two weeks before the presidential election, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered his annual State of the Union address. He made many promises to his own citizens and made a threat to the West: The Kremlin boss emphasized that there would be a risk of nuclear war if troops were sent to fight in Ukraine. Moscow has the weapons to attack targets in the West.
In a classification A. explainsRD correspondent Ina Ruckthat this should be understood as a reaction to the statements of French President Emmanuel Macron, who had not ruled out Western ground troops in Ukraine. It’s not Putin’s first threat of this kind, but it’s on the horizon, says Ruck. “This is certainly something he does because he knows that it will catch on in the West. He knows that there are many skeptics about the West’s position on Ukraine matters, such as arms deliveries, and he uses every opportunity to instill fear, I think.”
Promises “on a grand scale”
However, Putin said nothing about the current front lines or the situation in Ukraine, nor did he comment on the latest events in the breakaway region of Transnistria in the Republic of Moldova. “This speech was clearly a campaign speech, if one can even talk about an election campaign in Russia,” said Ruck. “It was the program that he wanted to run with, which primarily consisted of – and I found that very interesting – distributing money. There were really big promises about who would get more in the coming years.” It was very noticeable how much money was mentioned.
Lasting more than two hours, the speech was also significantly longer than previous speeches. Was the performance overall rather weak or a sign of strength? “That’s the big question,” said Ruck. “I’ve been asking myself, if you’re so secure in the saddle, if you can actually be sure that you’ll win the next election, why do you have to make these promises? Is it because you want to keep people happy? Is it because perhaps it is necessary to make these promises? I wouldn’t say it was a speech from a position of weakness, Putin is not weak here in the country. But I found it very remarkable that he that obviously needs to make these promises.”