“We are going to introduce all modern technologies to increase military potential. We are already working on the development of military weapons which, due to its characteristics, sThey are superior to Western military weaponry. We are developing the mass production of all these mechanisms”. This is the warning issued by the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, in a special speech that he has made on the occasion of the anniversary of the first year of war in Ukraine, and in which he has accused the US of starting the conflict. This is how the Russian leader expressed himself during a speech in which he assured that “a very critical moment” is taking place because “historical events” are taking place.

Especially in Ukraine, which has been referred to as the “land of Russian grandfathers and grandmothers” which currently has a “Nazism problem”. Thus, he has stated that Russia will overcome “step by step, carefully and continuously, the challenges it encounters” through what he has continued to call a “special military operation”. “For a long time, Donbas has been fighting to be able to live freely on its land and speak its own language. It has always been facing the Kyiv government, which hates this territory very much,” the Russian president denounced.

Likewise, he specified: “We did everything possible to be able to solve this problem in a peaceful way, but it is quite complicated.” “They are the ones who started the war and we did everything possible to stop all of that.“, Putin has asserted. Along these lines, he has stated that before “Russia began the special military operation, military weapons and planes were already arriving in Ukrainian territory, and on many occasions the Ukrainian government spoke of obtaining nuclear weapons.” No However, despite insisting that it was the West that started the “information technology and military” war, he has indicated that “so far they have not been able to achieve anything and they will not achieve it.”

“All those who initiated the sanctions are doing their worst: they close factories, they suffer an energy crisis… but they tell their citizens that it is the fault of the Russians. They have broken contracts with our companies, they disconnect us from the network world banking, they freeze the reserves of our citizens in the West, they try to drown the ruble or increase inflation, but their calculations have failed. Russia is stronger than they supposed,” Putin added.

Neo-Nazis, terrorists… even the devil uses the West to fight Russia.”

Vladimir Putin (President of Russia)

Thus, the Russian leader has reproached the West for its “unprecedented lies” while they have advocated for supposed peaceful solutions. “For many years we have worked on the possibility of having formulas for peace with our foreign partners, but what we have really received are NATO troops on our borders,” Putin denounced, stressing that “no country in the world has so many military bases like the United States throughout the world”, a nation that he has accused of “departing from the main agreements on the use of long-range weapons”.

A country, the USA, which according to Putin in all the wars it participated in “more than 900,000 people died and caused more than 38 million to go to other countries, requesting asylum“. “Really, this is very difficult to forget”, he argued, adding, in the specific case of Ukraine, that “there was no doubt that on February 23 in Donbas something very hard would have happened. Those who were planning the new attack understood that the next blow was going to be in the Crimea, and we knew it,” argued Putin, who has charged the West for “starting from Ukraine an anti-Russian project that began in the 19th century.” .

Indeed, Putin has continued to accuse the West of “use the whole world” against their territory because “the most important thing is that there are countries fighting against Russia”. “Neo-Nazis, terrorists… even the devil they use to fight against Russia,” the Kremlin’s top president argued, settling that “all responsibility for this escalating conflict rests on the shoulders” of his enemy bloc, whom he has accused of using Ukraine “as a military site”. For this reason, he has issued this warning: “It must be understood that if Ukraine is going to receive long-range weapons, we are going to be obliged to prevent these weapons from reaching our territory.”

A year without big wins

One year after the start of hostilities, Putin has not been able to present to the Federal Assembly great victories or great territorial gains, beyond those achieved in the first months of fighting. Since July 2022, when the Russian army seized the Lisichansk bastion, the troops have not conquered any major Ukrainian towns. This has led Putin to change the commanders of the forces fighting in Ukraine several times.

This is how he proceeded until, at the beginning of this year, he put the criticized chief of the General Staff, Valeri Guerásimov, at the head of the contingent. Since then, things have not improved.. The Kremlin’s goal is to seize control of the four annexed regions, although it is a long way from achieving its goal, especially in Donetsk and Kherson, where the army withdrew from the northern third of that southern region in November.

Wagner’s mercenaries are the only ones to have achieved any notable success on the Bakhmut front, though the Ukrainian defenders are still holding out six months after the start of the assault. The long-awaited Russian general offensive has not just arrived and the promised Western tanks against Kyiv are just around the corner. The imprisoned opposition leader, Alexéi Navalni, has assured that Russia is suffering “a full-fledged military defeat” in Ukraine and has opted for a post-war period without Putin.