Putin's speech

Vladimir the Great

Russia's president tells his people the West is out to get them

THE omens were bad. A few hours before Vladimir Putin, Russias president, was to start his state-of-
the-nation address on Thursday, Chechen insurgents launched an attack on Grozny, the Chechen
capital. The presidential motorcade was spotted rushing to the Kremlin in the middle of the night. But
when Mr Putin finished speaking, there was a light sigh of relief. He did not declare war on the West,
or order every human-right organisation in the country to be shut down; he even promised not to
suffocate private business. By current Russian standards, this was the height of liberalism.

Mr Putin started with Crimea, which Russia annexed in March. He claimed the peninsula was as
sacred to Russians as Jerusalem's Temple Mount is for Jews and Muslims: his namesake, Grand
Prince Vladimir (or "Vladimir the Great"), was baptised there in 988 before bringing Christianity to
Kievan Rus, the nascent state which later evolved into Russia. This appeal to religious history dodges
the fact that Crimea was only conquered by Russia in the late 18th century, and spent far longer as a
part of the Ottoman Empire. It will be of little help in dodging Western sanctions.

But Russia's annexation of Crimea, Mr Putin argued, was no more than an excuse for Western
sanctions against Russia; had it not been for Crimea, the West would have thought of something else.
In the 1990s, he claimed, American special services financed and supported Chechen terrorists in an
effort to split Russia. They would gladly let Russia follow the Yugoslav scenario of disintegration and
dismemberment.It did not work, just as it did not work for Hitlerwho set out to destroy Russia
and pushed us back beyond the Urals. Everyone should remember how it ended, Mr Putin said. The
overthrow of the government in Kiev in February was allegedly organised by America to encroach on
Russia's interests. Russia, in Mr Putin's version, had not initiated the confrontation with the West, but
was pushed into it by an America bent on dominating the world.

The most worrying thing about Mr Putins address is that he may actually believe it. Just as the
Russian media invented Ukrainian fascists to justify its hybrid war in Ukraine, it is now inventing
American aggression to justify its isolation and confrontation with the West. As Ekaterina Schulmann,
a columnist and political analyst, put it, Aggression is born out of feeling insultedin the eyes of the
perpetrator it gives justification for every horrible action.

Mr Putin did talk about the economy, promising not to raise taxes for four years, and to provide legal
amnesty for repatriation of money coming into the country from offshore. In contrast to Mikhail
Gorbachev who, in the face of the oil price collapse in the mid-1980s, opened the Soviet political
system to competition and improved relations with the West, Mr Putin did not utter a word about the
Russian political system or about corruption. Mr Putin clearly hopes that the devaluation of the
currency, combined with a less draconian attitude to private property, will spur economic growth.

The trouble is that it is not just the rouble that has been devalued, but Mr Putins words as well. As
Boris Nemtsov, Russias veteran opposition politician, says, the trust between business and the
Kremlin has been destroyed. What Mr Putin says no longer has any bearing on the economy. While
Mr Putin was talking, the rouble kept falling. The Russian public may have been euphoric about the
annexation of Crimea when their incomes kept growing. But it now seems more concerned about the
erosion of living standards and high inflation than it is about the place where Prince Vladimir was
baptised.