Reuters: Vladimir Putin’s religious, ethnic rhetoric gets a little scary in Russian state-of-the-union address
PHOTO: Employees and residents of the retirement home watch a TV broadcast showing Russia’s President Vladimir Putin delivering his annual state of the union speech to members of parliament and other top officials in the Kremlin, in Stavropol, December 4, 2014. REUTERS/Eduard Korniyenko
Vladimir Putin lives in a scary world, where enemies plot tirelessly to undermine, trick, and destroy Russia. Containment wasn’t just a Cold War policy but a practice of Russia’s rivals for centuries. Even without a conflict in Ukraine, the United States and European Union would have come up with another pretext for imposing economic sanctions; they were an inevitable response to a rising Russia.
In his annual state-of-the-nation address on Thursday, the Russian president laid out his version of the year’s events in an effort to shore up support for his confrontation with the West amid growing economic troubles. The one-hour speech, held before 1,000 politicians and other public figures in the Kremlin, was defensive, strident, and formulaic. At moments, it was hard to tell whether Putin really believed everything he was saying — or if he had fallen prey to his own propaganda.