In a new interview, President Vladimir Putin warns that Russia and the Russian people face an existential threat from the West.
– If we follow this path, I believe that the fate of many of the peoples of Russia, and above all, the Russian people, can change dramatically, in a fundamental way. I don’t even know if an ethnic group like the Russian people can survive in the form it exists today, says Putin on the TV channel Rossiya 1, reproduced by the state-run Russian news agency Tass.
Killed: – Was very injured
The Russian president then claims that the West has concrete plans to tear Russia to shreds, and that these plans are set down on paper.
– They have one goal: To tear the former Soviet Union and its main component – Russia – apart. Of course we have to respond to this, says Putin.
– Unacceptable
Ever since he invaded Ukraine on 24 February last year, Russia’s president has presented the war as a “military special operation”. The purpose was to “denazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine, Putin said in the speech announcing the invasion.
But the speech was very much about how Putin believed that the West, and in particular the USA and NATO, had been undermining Russia for years.
Russian authorities do not use the word “war” to describe the situation in Ukraine, but that is exactly the word they use to describe Russia’s relationship with the West.
Three comrades killed: – We win
It is in Russia’s, and Putin’s, interest to portray the war in Ukraine as a conflict with the West and in particular the United States, says Timothy Snyder, one of the world’s foremost experts on Ukraine and Russia, in the TV documentary “Putin and the Presidents”.
– The Russians think about the USA all the time. Americans only think about Russia when they have to. It is a reality that Russian leaders cannot afford to acknowledge, because their power rests on the idea that they are a major world power. That the US does not think about Russia very much is therefore unacceptable, says Snyder.
– Efficient
Many of the points Putin made during Sunday’s TV interview were also part of the speech the president gave about the state of the country earlier this week.
– Putin presents it as if Russia is David against Goliath, but that Russia is a strong underdog that has no intention of giving up, said Russia expert and researcher at OsloMet, Jørn Holm-Hansen, to Dagbladet then.
By pointing to the West as the real enemy, Putin portrays the war in Ukraine as pure self-defense.
– Increased threat to the whole of Europe
– It is an effective rhetoric. You often think of Putin as helpless and hopeless, but if you accept his worldview, the speech hangs in the balance, added Holm-Hansen.
Sven G. Holtsmark, Russia expert and history professor at the Department of Defense Studies at the Norwegian Defense Academy, agreed that Putin’s rhetoric is effective in Russia.
– If I were Russian and sat and listened to the president talk about the crimes of the West, and talked quite plausibly about what the neo-Nazis in Kyiv are up to, then I would probably have bitten the hook myself, said Holtsmark.
