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https://www.politico.eu/article/putins-vision-next-six-years-keep-fighting-quit-drinking-have-babies/
Putins vision for Russias next 6 years: Keep fighting, quit drinking, have babies
Russian president makes quasi-campaign speech, two weeks before an election he is certain to win.
The Kremlin promised entertainment.
Western analysts feared Vladimir Putin would declare another war.
But the Russian presidents more than two-hour-long address on Thursday delivered on neither expectation, though Putin presented Russians with a vision of the future that alternated between nuclear saber-rattling and grand social promises.
Speaking two days after Frances President Emmanuel Macron said the possibility of sending Western troops to Ukraine could not be excluded, Putin warned that NATO involvement on the ground in Ukraine could have tragic consequences.
They should understand that we also have weapons that can hit targets on their territory. All this threatens to result in a nuclear conflict, and therefore the destruction of civilization. Dont they get that? Putin asked an audience made up of Russias political, religious and military elite.
He then accused Western leaders of treating the war in Ukraine which Putin unilaterally escalated by launching a full-scale invasion in February 2022, shaking Europes security architecture to its core like watching a cartoon.
Coming roughly two weeks before Putin is set to extend his rule for another six years in a presidential election of which the results are a foregone conclusion, the speech was as close to an electoral campaign as he is willing to get.
In the run-up to Thursdays address, the main intrigue had been whether he would use the opportunity to fuel tension in Moldovas eastern breakaway region of Transnistria, which borders Ukraine and has a largely pro-Russian population. Russia has around 1,500 troops stationed in Transnistria, which it refers to as peacekeepers.
Moscow officials in recent weeks have ramped up their rhetoric about the need to protect Russian citizens in Transnistria, in an ominous echo of the build up to Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Adding to concerns the Kremlin could expand its war westwards, Transnistrian officials on Wednesday gathered in a so-called congress of deputies, the first since 2006, and asked Russia to help it withstand economic pressure from the pro-EU government in Chiinu.
On Thursday, Putin did not mention Transnistria explicitly, but dismissed reports that Russia was planning to attack Europe or that it would deploy nuclear weapons in space as some kind of nonsense.
Instead, he accused the West of trying to trick Russia into a Soviet-style arms race which would sink its economy, while simultaneously boasting about Moscows weapons arsenal.
Showing no intention of backing down on Ukraine, Putin reiterated the claim that Russia had not started the war, but added it would do everything to eradicate Nazism, to defend the sovereignty of our citizens.