It was the anniversary of a Russian heroic deed. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. On Tuesday, April 12, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin used the anniversary to declare that the invasion of Ukraine was “inevitable” and thus, in passing, linked recent developments with the fame of a world-renowned Soviet citizen.
Putin spoke at the Vostochny space base in eastern Russia. He compared Gagarin’s achievement in a technologically isolated Soviet Union to today’s sanctioned Russia. Message: the “Sanction Blitzkrieg” that the West is now waging against Russia will not bring the country down.
In Putin’s view, Russia has come to the aid of the oppressed population in Ukraine’s Donbas region. “On the one hand we help and save people, on the other we simply take measures to guarantee the security of Russia itself. Obviously we had no choice. It was the right decision.” The goals that Russia is pursuing are, in Putin’s words, “perfectly clear” and “noble.”
Russia invaded a neighboring country on February 24 that posed no threat. In the nearly seven weeks since then, ten million Ukrainians have been displaced, two out of three Ukrainian children have become adrift, entire neighborhoods have been reduced to ashes and an unknown number have been killed and injured. Russian soldiers loot and commit war crimes. Thousands of Ukrainians are said to have been deported to Russia.
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Daily new mass graves
Images of murdered civilians in Butsha, Putin dismissed as fake news. Negotiations with Ukraine to reach a ceasefire have stalled, he said – although the Ukrainian side said talks are still ongoing. According to Putin, Kiev would not adhere to agreements previously made during negotiations in Istanbul.
The Ukrainian government, meanwhile, is doing everything it can to gather as much conclusive evidence as possible about the Russian misdeeds. War crimes are being investigated in the liberated areas. “New mass graves are found almost daily,” President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Lithuanian parliament on Tuesday via video link. He also stated that “hundreds of rape cases” have been documented in areas previously occupied by the Russian military. The victims included “young underage girls and very small children.”
Ukraine gathers evidence to counter Russian claim of ‘fake news’
According to the Russian president, the ‘military operation’ is proceeding according to plan, according to state news agency Tass, using the higher-ordered term for the war. Russia will continue until the original goals are achieved.
Putin also said Moscow will act at a moderate pace as originally envisioned. Speeding up the operation would lead to losses. It has always been about the Donbas, actions in other parts of Ukraine were designed to weaken the opponent. Russian soldiers withdrew from Kiev in recent days because they were unable to take the capital and are now regrouping in the southeast for a battle on the Donbas
The West is trying to isolate Russia with sanctions. But, Putin said during his ‘Cosmonauts Day’ speech, it is impossible in the modern world to isolate a country extensively, “especially a country as huge as Russia”.
At the time of Gagarin, in the early 1960s, the Soviet Union and the United States were engaged in a Space Race, in which the Soviet Union initially took the lead.
Putin: “Despite everything, the Soviet Union was the first to launch an artificial satellite, we had the first cosmonaut, the first flight to the moon, the first spacewalk and the first female cosmonaut. Tereshkova – God bless her – was also ours.
“Can you really think that today’s Russia with its advanced technology is incapable of sustaining its space program in the future?”
It was the Russian president’s first public appearance outside Moscow since the war began. Putin was accompanied – not coincidentally – by Aleksandr Lukashenko, leader of Belarus and ally.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of April 13, 2022