Report # 95. President Putin made some remarks on Ukraine

 

July 8, 2022

1. Putin made them during meeting with State Duma and party leaders

On July 7^th. 2022 President Putin met with the leaders of the State Duma and the heads of party factions in the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation.

President Putin thanked every parliamentary party for the organised humanitarian support of the people of Donbass by arranging the distribution of food, medications and basic necessities, and quickly setting up humanitarian aid centres.

He noted that the so-called collective West led by the United States has been extremely aggressive towards Russia for decades. In his words, “Our proposals to create a system of equal security in Europe have been rejected. Initiatives for cooperation on the issue of missile defence were rejected. Warnings about the unacceptability of NATO expansion, especially at the expense of the former republics of the Soviet Union, were ignored. Even the idea of Russia's possible integration into this North Atlantic alliance at the stage of, as it seemed then, cloudless relations with NATO, apparently, seemed absurd to its members”.

 President continued: “Why? Just because they do not need a country like Russia, that is why. That is why they supported terrorism and separatism in Russia, and internal destructive forces and a ‘fifth column’ in our country. All of them are still receiving unconditional support from the collective West.

We are being told, we hear some people say that we started the war in Donbass, in Ukraine. No, the war was unleashed by the collective West, which organised and supported the unconstitutional armed coup in Ukraine in 2014, and then encouraged and justified genocide against the people of Donbass. The collective West is the direct instigator and the culprit of what is happening today.

If the West wanted to provoke a conflict in order to move on to a new stage in the fight against Russia and a new stage in containing our country, we can say that it has succeeded to a certain extent. A war was unleashed, and the sanctions were imposed. Under normal circumstances, it would probably be difficult to accomplish this.

But here is what I would you like to make clear. They should have realised that they would lose from the very beginning of our special military operation, because this operation also means the beginning of a radical breakdown of the US-style world order. This is the beginning of the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world based not on self-serving rules made up by someone for their own needs, behind which there is nothing but striving for hegemony, not on hypocritical double standards, but on international law and the genuine sovereignty of nations and civilisations, on their will to live their historical destiny, with their own values and traditions, and to align cooperation on the basis of democracy, justice and equality.

Everyone should understand that this process cannot be stopped. The course of history is inexorable, and the collective West’s attempts to impose its new world order on the rest of the world are doomed.

At the same time, I want to say and emphasise that we have many supporters, including in the United States and Europe, and even more so on other continents and in other countries. And there will be more, no doubt about that.

To reiterate, even in the countries that are still satellites of the United States, there is a growing understanding that their ruling elites’ blind obedience to their overlord, as a rule, does not necessarily coincide with their national interests, and most often simply and even radically contradicts them. Eventually, everyone will have to face this growing sentiment in society.

Today, these ruling elites are raising the degree to which they manipulate the public consciousness right before our eyes. The ruling classes of the Western countries, which are supranational and globalist in nature, realised that their policies are increasingly detached from reality, common sense and the truth, and they have started resorting to openly despotic methods.

The West, which once declared such principles of democracy as freedom of speech, pluralism and respect for dissenting opinions, has now degenerated into the opposite: totalitarianism. This includes censorship, media bans, and the arbitrary treatment of journalists and public figures.

These kinds of prohibitions have been extended not only to the information space, but also to politics, culture, education, and art – to all spheres of public life in the Western countries. And, they are imposing this on the world; they are trying to impose this model, a model of totalitarian liberalism, including the notorious cancel culture of widespread bans.

However, the truth and reality is that the people in most of these countries do not want this life or this future, and really do not want the formal semblance of sovereignty, they want substantive, real sovereignty and are simply tired of kneeling, of humiliating themselves before those who consider themselves exceptional, and of serving their interests even to their own detriment.

Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. Well, what can I say? Let them try. We have already heard a lot about the West wanting to fight us ”to the last Ukrainian.“ This is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people, but that seems to be where it is going. But everyone should know that, by and large, we have not started anything in earnest yet.

At the same time, we are not rejecting peace talks, but those who are rejecting them should know that the longer it goes on, the harder it will be for them to negotiate with us”.

*   *   *

On July 8, Presidential Press-Secretary Dmitry Peskov gave a short explanation to the remark made by President Putin “But everyone should know that, by and large, we have not started anything in earnest yet” [in Ukraine].

Dmitry Peskov said that these words mean that during the Special Military Operation in Ukraine Russian Armed Forces have used not all their potentials. He added: «Putin thus simply reminded that the potentials are completely incommensurable. And Russia's potential is so great in this regard that only a small part of it is now being used during a Special Military Operation."

Written by Vladimir P. Kozin