Putin Rails Against ‘Western Elites’ in Speech Aimed at U.S. Conservatives
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Putin’s remarks seem to be aimed at conservatives in the U.S. and Europe.
President Vladimir V. Putin, in a speech seemingly aimed more at winning over political conservatives abroad than his own citizens, declared on Thursday that Russia’s battle was with “Western elites,” not with the West itself.
Mr. Putin, addressing an annual foreign policy conference outside Moscow, appeared intent on capitalizing on political divisions in the United States and its allies that have only heightened since they began showering Ukraine with military aid to fend off the Russian invasion.
Many of the themes of the Russian leader’s speech were familiar, but they took on particular resonance given the coming midterm elections in the United States and growing discontent in Europe over the costs of the war.
“There are at least two Wests,” Mr. Putin said.
One, he said, is a West of “traditional, mainly Christian values” with which Russians feel kinship. But, he said, “there’s another West — aggressive, cosmopolitan, neocolonial, acting as the weapon of the neoliberal elite,” and trying to impose its “pretty strange” values on the rest of the world.
Mr. Putin, as he often does, portrayed Russia as threatened by the possible expansion of NATO — and the values of its liberal democracies — to include countries like Ukraine that were once part of the Soviet Union.
He denied that Moscow was preparing to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine. “We have no need to do this,” he said. “There’s no sense for us, neither political nor military.”
It is Mr. Putin himself, however, who has raised that prospect, as have other senior Russian officials. And Kremlin assurances have proved unreliable. In the days before the war began, for example, Russia denied that it planned to invade Ukraine.
“This is a trick — it shouldn’t make anyone relax,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political analyst, noting that Mr. Putin has blamed the West and its support for an independent Ukraine for every escalation in the war. “His goal is to show that escalation is the product of Western policies.”
In Ukraine, officials ridiculed Mr. Putin’s speech. Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, said the Russian president was accusing the West of what he has been doing himself, chiefly violating another country’s sovereignty.
“Any speech by Putin can be described in two words: ‘for Freud,’” Mr. Podolyak posted on Twitter.
— Anton Troianovski, Ivan Nechepurenko and Eric Nagourney
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