Putin’s bellicose speech had messages for myriad audiences.
The speech that Vladimir V. Putin gave to Russian lawmakers and governors on Friday asserting that Russia would take control of four Ukrainian regions reverberated far beyond the Kremlin’s walls. It was a display of belligerent defiance intended, it seemed, to appeal to three primary audiences.
To Russians, he sought to justify the expanding hardship his war has caused by insisting they were fighting for their survival. To the West, he telegraphed his determination that he was unbowed by sanctions or arms deliveries to Ukraine — and that Russia would keep fighting. Implicit in his message was a veiled but menacing threat that Moscow still has an enormous nuclear arsenal.
And to the rest of the world, Mr. Putin tried to cast himself as the leader of a global movement against “Western racists” that he claimed were imposing American hegemony upon the world. The West, he asserted, had not changed from centuries past, in which European powers brutally colonized impoverished countries and fought wars to gain economic advantage.
Western countries, he insisted, had “no moral right” to condemn the annexation of parts of Ukraine.
“The Western elites remain colonizers as they always were,” Mr. Putin said. “They have divided the world into their vassals — the so-called ‘civilized countries’ — and everyone else.”
Several hours after his speech, Mr. Putin appeared onstage at a concert and rally celebrating the annexation on Red Square outside the Kremlin. Russian news media reported that Moscow universities had directed students to attend.
Standing before St. Basil’s Cathedral below a banner that said “Russia!” and that was flanked with others reading “Choice of the people!” and “Together forever!,” Mr. Putin reprised his false historical narrative about Ukraine having been “created” by the Soviet Union and led the crowd in chanting “Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!”
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