[Gateway] On Wednesday, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was touting a ’light at the end of the tunnel’ to the war in Ukraine (see Proposed ’Fifteen Point Peace Plan’ in Russia-Ukraine War Is a Total Defeat for Putin, but Zelensky Is Biding His Time), President Vladimir Putin gave a speech that did not indicate that he had any intention of settling for less than total victory in Ukraine and signaled a crackdown on elements of his own society.
The first part of the speech repeats his litany of complaints about Ukraine, the hardships imposed on the people of Donetsk and Luhansk (he never mentions that their hardship is 100% self-inflicted by them entering into a state of insurrection, and he never mentions that Russia fomented that insurrection and bears primary responsibility for those hardships), and the indignities suffered by Noble Russia at the hands of NATO and their stooges in Ukraine. |