This Friday, Vladimir Putin spoke for nearly 45 minutes during a ceremony organized to formalize the annexation of four Ukrainian regions in which "referendums" denounced by the entire international community were organized from September 23 to 27.
"The inhabitants of Lugansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhya become our fellow citizens forever," he declared, victorious, in front of a conquered audience.
In the midst of a debacle following the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the east of the country, Putin, cornered, had to "absolutely secure a kind of victory", analyzes Lukas Aubin, researcher at IRIS (Institute of International and Strategic Relations) and expert of Russian geopolitics.
“He reverses the roles: now he is the one who is occupied, he is no longer the occupier and therefore he will have to defend himself.
It is perhaps easier to convince its population that they must defend their own territory than to explain to them that it is necessary to invade another", argues the author of "Geopolitics of Russia" (Ed The Discovery, 2022).
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But if the leader opened his speech on Ukraine, he quickly broadened his remarks to indulge in a virulent diatribe against the West.
“The words were strong enough.
He spoke of informational famine in the West, he quoted Goebbels…”, lists the researcher.
If the speech "is not new", it was "perhaps more vehement than usual".
“We felt that a lot of bridges were broken between Russia and the West (…) We have the feeling that for him, there is no going back possible,” says Lukas Aubin.
An analysis to be found in the video at the top of the article.