When Vladimir Putin came onto the stage and the camera panned over the applauding audience, over the dark blue suits of the members of parliament, the red sweaters and white shirts of young volunteers, the audience itself briefly looked like the Russian flag. Putin’s appearances are always perfectly staged; this was his nineteenth and longest address to the nation to date. Mainly it was a kind of campaign speech, even though there is no real election campaign in Russia and even though Putin didn’t mention the vote in mid-March once.
Putin’s Speech to the Nation: Big Promises – Politics
