Putin justified the invasion of Ukraine on the grounds that a ‘genocide’ has been going on against Russians in eastern Ukraine for eight years. In addition, he said Kyiv was working on a nuclear bomb and a Ukrainian attack on the Donbas and Crimea was “only a matter of time”.
So, according to Putin, Russia had “no choice” but to launch a “special military operation” that could not be limited to the pro-Russian rebel republics. “That would not be a permanent solution,” the president said.
He also hit hard language towards the West. There Russians would be persecuted; he even drew a comparison with the pogroms against the Jews. The West would also aim to ‘cancel’ Russia with the sanctions. “Its sole purpose is the destruction of Russia,” Putin warned his compatriots.
horrifying
His warning that there is an ‘existential threat’ to Russia was clearly intended as an attempt to mobilize the population at a time when criticism is beginning to be heard in Russia about the war that more and more Russian soldiers are living. costs.
For anyone who isn’t fully behind the military operation, Putin had a chilling message. He spoke of a ‘fifth column’ of people with a ‘slave’ attitude towards the West. But according to him, the Russian people are very good at “distinguishing between patriots and rascals and traitors, who spit them out like a fly that they got in their mouths.”
That message seemed mainly aimed at oligarchs who, according to Putin, “make their money in Russia, but don’t live there.” Putin said he has no problem with people who have villas in France and “love foie gras, oysters and gender freedoms”, but with those who are “mentally not one with the people, with Russia”.
And it’s not just the oligarchs who have to watch out. Putin called for a ‘cleansing of society’, which he says will make Russia ‘only stronger’.
Toxic Climate
Many Russians will hear a chilling echo of terror under Soviet rule, especially under Soviet dictator Stalin. In recent years, Putin has waged a brutal campaign against anything that smelled of opposition to his regime. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny was poisoned, and when that did not silence him, he was imprisoned. Human rights groups were declared ‘foreign agents’ or even labeled ‘extremist’, while one independent medium after another had to shut down.
But the climate is now getting even more toxic. Since the invasion of Ukraine began, authorities have been creating an atmosphere of war, although bombs are only falling on the Ukrainian side of the border. In schools, students are told day after day that NATO is about to invade Russia. Even in kindergarten, toddlers who can barely walk receive their first military-patriotic lessons. Their colorful hansopjes were provided with a Z, the sign of the Russian troops in Ukraine.
Earlier this month, the Russian parliament already passed a law that imposes a prison sentence of up to 15 years for spreading ‘fake news’ that discredits the Russian armed forces. Another very lenient punishment, one deputy said. “In World War II, such people were executed on the spot.”
‘No vojne’
Thousands of people protesting the war were arrested – even demonstrators holding up a blank piece of paper or a sign that read ‘two words’, a reference to ‘no vojne‘, ‘no to the war’. The first processes have already started. In the city of Seversk, a 63-year-old woman has been charged with smearing the army via Telegram, even though she only has 170 followers. She can get three years.
Recently, people who are known as opponents of the war have also found their front doors defaced with a Z, the war sign meaning ‘For Victory’. ‘Don’t sell your country, you dirty whore!’, one activist read.
But according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov, that is not yet a sign of an imminent purge. “Right now all people are expressing their feelings very emotionally about what is happening,” he told the independent site meduza† “And the vast majority of them are people who support the president emotionally.”
But it’s not just some over-enthusiastic Putin supporters who have plunged into the hunt for ‘traitors’. In the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, according to the independent newspaper, residents Novaja Gazeta a text message from authorities asking them to provide phone numbers and addresses of ‘malicious’ people seeking to discredit the armed forces.