Transcript: Putin's Annual Address to Russia

Putin Speaks of the Treachery of the Insane, War-Mongering West. Putin is the Only Rational Leader In Europe

[minor clarifications and bolded sections by Doug]

President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Dear members of State Duma, Senators, dear Citizens of Russian Federation, in today’s address, I’m giving this state address in a very difficult context, in a very difficult time. There are cardinal major changes in the world. There are historic changes that determine the future of our country and our people. Every one of us has a great responsibility. About a year ago in order to protect our people on our historic land, in order to ensure security, in order to liquidate the threat that appeared from the Kyiv regime.

After the [US] military coup in 2014 [in Ukraine], we decided to conduct a special military operation [in Crimea]. Step-by-step we will continue to resolve the objectives that before us. Starting from 2014, Donbas has been fighting to defend its right to live on its territory and speak its own language. They were fighting and not giving up in the conditions of a blockade and constant shelling. And in the context of complete hatred from the Kyiv regime, they waited and they believed that the Russia would come to their help.

(06:43)
You know this very well, that we did everything possible. Indeed, everything possible in order to resolve this problem in a peaceful way. We were patient in our negotiations to come out of this horrible conflict. However, behind our backs, a completely different scenario was being prepared. The assurances from the Western leaders to ensure peace in Donbas turned out to be a lie. They were just dragging time and they were trying to close their eyes to the political killings and repressions of the Kyiv regime and abuse of religion and terrorist acts in Donbas. In Western academies and training centers they were training nationalists units and supplying weapons. I would like to emphasize that it was before the special military operation they were negotiating the supply of heavy military equipment and planes and anti-aircraft defense systems. And they were also publicly talking about supply of nuclear weapons.

(08:09)
NATO and Western countries were setting their military bases on our borders and biological laboratories, and they were training on the future theater of military actions. And today they recognize this. They publicly recognize this without shying away. They are talking about Minsk Agreements and Normandy Agreement to be just a show, a spectacle. And when Russia, I would like to emphasize, when Russia sincerely tried to find a peaceful solution, they were playing with lives of people and they were playing a dirty game. And this repulsive lie and their behavior, two-face behavior was seen in Yugoslavia, in Iraq, Syria, and they will not be able to wash away that shame ever of centuries of colonialism and dictatorship. They’re used to this idea that they could do anything, that it turns out that they are treating their own people in this way. They also deceive their own people by telling them stories about peaceful agreements in Donbas. And it’s just total and unprincipled lies [The West is truly the empire of lies. He’s exactly right].

(09:59)
We have been insisting on protecting our own interests and also that protecting the position that there should not be a situation in the world where there are civilized countries in the rest of the world. We were very open and we were sincerely open for a dialogue with the West, and we were insisting on Europe and the rest of the world to have an equal system of defense and ecosystem of security. We were proposing to our partners this idea, and in response we were getting dishonest answers. But there were also specific actions, expansion of NATO to our borders, creation of new anti-rocket defense systems in Europe, and developing military contingents on the borders of Russia. And I’d like to emphasize that no other country in the world has as many foreign military bases as the United States. They have hundreds, hundreds of military bases around the world.

(11:20)
The whole planet is dotted with their bases. And we saw them exit fundamental agreements on limiting rockets of medium to long range. And they were exiting other agreements supporting peace in the world. They were doing it for a reason. And in December 2021, we officially directed to the U.S. and to Europe our request for guarantees for security. However, we received a direct refusal to our offers and it became clear that the reaction was demonstrated and the threat was growing. And we had no doubt that by February 2022, everything was prepared for a punitive action in Donbas, where Kyiv regime provided artillery and aviation and other weapons to attack Donbas back in 2014. In 2015, they attempted again to directly attack Donbas. They continued shelling, terror in relation to citizens. All of this was completely against the documents that were accepted by the United Nations Security Council. I would like to repeat. They started the war and we used the force in order to stop it.

(13:22)
Those who planned a new attack on Donetsk, on Donbas, on Lugansk, they clearly understood that the next objective is strike against Sevastopol and Crimea. We understood this and they are again in Kyiv talking directly about their plans. And we knew that already. We protect people and protect their homes. And the objectives of the West is infinite power. They spent $150 billion to support militarily Kyiv regime. To compare this, to put this into perspective, in 2021, 2022, big seven countries provided to the poorest countries only 60 billion aid. Also, and in exchange for that 60 billion, they require complete submission to their will.

(14:36)
With this, the flow of money to finance the war is not stopping. And they continue supplying means to provide coups in other countries. And at the recent security conference, there was an endless flow of accusations against Russia. And this was done, it seems, in order for everyone to forget that over the last 10 years, it was the West who opened, who released the genie from the bottle as a result of wars. We did not come up with these figures. These figures are provided by them. As a result of wars that were started by United States since 2021, about 900,000 people died and millions became refugees.

(15:35)
And they’re trying to delete this from the memory of people. They’re trying to pretend this did not happen, but nobody forgot that. The people’s tragedy is not important to them. And they’re betting trillions, trillions of dollars, and they are trying to continue robbing everyone else and they’re covering themselves with words of democracy and values. They are trying to label other countries and publicly insult them. And they’re creating that image of enemy within their own countries in order to divert attention from corruption scandals within their own countries. They are diverting attention from the growing social economic problems. I would like to remind you that in 1930s, Western countries opened the path for Nazi Germany to develop. And in this century, they did this to Ukraine. And anyone who knows history and knows that this goes back to the 19th century Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and this was, they only had the single goal to separate these territories from their historic ties with our country.

(17:06)
There’s nothing new. Everything is repeating. History keeps repeating. They have supported the coup in 2014. And this was a bloody coup, anti-state, anti-constitution coup. And as if nothing had happened, and they even told us how much money they spent on it. The ideological basis for this was Russophobia. And it’s a shame to even say that one of the units of the Ukrainian Army was given a name, Edelweiss. Edelweiss is a name of a Nazi German unit, and they have very popular chevrons on their uniform with the German Nazi insignia. And they’ve got very marked signs on their tanks. And the neo-Nazis are not even hiding who they inherited their history from. And we see that those in power choose to close their eyes on this. Why? Because they don’t give a damn. Because they are trying to fight us. They’re trying to fight Russia. And that means they want to use anything. They want to use everyone, terrorist, Nazis, even devil himself, to use it as weapon against Russia. The project anti-Russia is a revolutionist policy against our country.

(19:07)
Back in the ’30s of last century and today, it’s the same idea to direct aggression to the east, to start the war in Europe using other people’s tools. And we said that we’re not fighting in Ukraine. We said that the Ukrainian people have become a hostages of their Western masters who occupied this country in political, in economic and military sense. Of decades, they were destroying Ukrainian industry and robbing the country. And as a consequence of this, it became the poverty and social division grew. And this was the material for the military actions. And of course, they turned these people into canon fodder. And this is a sad reality, but it’s a fact.

(20:10)
The responsibility for starting the conflict, for growing number of victims lies totally with the West and with Kyiv regime for whom Ukrainian people are not their own, effectively. This regime is not serving their national interests. They’re serving interests of foreign powers. The Ukraine is now like a training ground for them. I’m not going to talk about the plans of Western powers to increase military aid. Everyone knows about this. But one thing is very clear to everyone. The greater the range of these systems, the further away we will be forced to move the threat from our borders.

(21:09)
The elites of the West are not hiding their goals. They are, as they say, trying to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia. What does that mean to us? That means they want to end with Russia. They want to turn a local conflict into a phase of global conflict. This is how we understand this. And we will react in an appropriate way. Because in this case, we’re talking about existence of our country. They also have to take into account that it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield. So they increase their information attacks and of course they are targeting our young generation. And of course they keep lying here. They’re twisting historic facts. They’re going against our culture, against our religious organizations.

(22:20)
Look at what they’ve done to their own people. They’re destroying family, national identity, they are abusing their children. Even pedophilia is announced as a normal thing in the West. And they’re recognizing same sex marriages. That’s fine that they’re adults. They’ve got the right to live their life. And we always, we’re very tolerant about this in Russian. Nobody is trying to enter private lives of people, and we’re not going to do this. However, we need to tell them, but look at the scriptures of any religion in the world. Everything is said in there. And one of the things is that family is a union of a man and a woman.

(23:21)
But even the sacred texts are subjected to doubt. Anglican Church is planning to consider the idea of a gender-neutral God. What can you say here? Millions of people in the West understand that they are being led to spiritual destruction. Elites are going crazy and this cannot be cured it seems. But our duty is to protect our children. And we will do this. We will protect our children from degradation. It’s obvious that the West will continue trying to destabilize our society. They’ll be using our traitors, who’ve been throughout the ages, have the same attitude to their own people, hatred for their own nation. And this was the case forever.

(24:42)
They are attempting terrorist attacks that are aimed at destabilizing our society. But we will never be similar to Western regimes and to Kyiv regime who are used to witch hunting. Were not going to hunt those who betrayed the motherland. Let them live with this. They have to live with it. What’s important is that citizens of Russia have to give them a moral valuation. We need to be proud that we are a multicultural nation and majority of our people have a principle position in relation to the special military operation. They understand the meaning of it. They supported our actions in Donbas and real patriotism was seen in this support. And historically, this has always been a feature of our nation.

(25:59)
Everyone understands the connection of their personal life to the life of their motherland. Dear friends, I’d like to thank everyone, all people of Russia for decisiveness and for their heroic attitude. I’d like to thank our offices of Navy and Army and all the forces, to the fighters of Donbas and Lugansk region, to volunteers who are fighting in different areas, and BARS as well. I apologize that I will not be able to name everyone. When I was preparing this speech, there was a long, long list of heroic units, military units. I will not be able to name all of them. I did not want to offend anyone by not naming them.

(27:02)
I would like to bow down to relatives and wives and parents and wives and families and doctors and instructors, nurses who are saving the wounded. To the railroad workers, construction workers who are creating the defense structures and also building homes, and engineers of defense factories who are working several shifts now, to agricultural workers who are supplying constant stream of food and products. I would like to thank teachers who are sincerely taking care of the new generation of Russians, especially those who are working in very difficult conditions near

Speaker 1 (28:00):

Near to the frontline, all the cultural figures who come to the frontline, who come to the hospitals to support them, to journalists. First of all, military journalists who are risking their lives in order to tell the truth to the whole world have representatives of traditional religions who are supporting the military entrepreneurs, government officials, everyone who is fulfilling their national and human duty. I would like to express special gratitude to citizens of Lugansk and Donetsk Republics and Zaporozhye region. You yourselves determined your future. You made your choice despite the threats of terror the Nazis, even though next to you there were military actions taking place and you made the choice to be together with Russia, to be together with your motherland. We have started and we will continue to grow. I’d like to emphasize that this reaction of our audience addressed to the citizens of Donetsk and Lugansk and Zaporozhye regions. We bow down to you. We began and we will continue our program of social restoration of these territories, and the idea is to bring back the factories and the industry and we will create access to our internal sea. Now, as of sea, we will create the new highway to Crimea and connect it to the rest of Russia. And all regions of Russia are providing direct support to cities and towns of Donetsk and Lugansk and other regions, and they’re doing it as real brothers and sisters. Today we’re together again, and that means we’re stronger again, and that means we’re going to do everything in order to bring our length back to peace and to ensure security.

(31:11)
It is for this, for our ancestors, for the future of our children and grandchildren in order to restore historic justice. This is what our fighters are fighting for and our heroes are fighting for. I would like to respect the memory of all fighters who died in military action and all civilians who died in this military action. Thank you. We understand that it is very hard for wives and daughters and sons of our military personnel. They have brought up very distant defenders just like our ancestors were defending Donbas. And they have got a very strong spirit and our duty is to support those families who lost loved ones and help them bring up their children. The family of every member of the special military operation needs to be surrounded with care and attention and we need to respond to their needs very, very quickly. I propose to create a special state fund whose objective would be personal help to the families and veterans of special military operation and those who died in action. This fund will coordinate social, medical, and psychological support, they will provide help in educational sport, in entrepreneurship, in providing new professions and professional development, and also long-term home care for all those who are in need of it. And I’m requesting the government and the committee on social affairs together with regions to resolve all organizational aspects of this within the shortest possible time. And also provide these services without any bureaucracy through a one window system. Every family, I emphasize, every family of a fallen soldier and every veteran of the action has to have a personal contact in this fund who will, in real time, deal with current issues. I’d like to point out that the structure of this fund has to be deployed by the end of this year. We already have measures of supporting the veterans of the great patriotic war and the veterans of other local conflicts. And we need to work on this and improve this.

(35:08)
I’d like to emphasize that creation of this special fund does not alleviate other structures of their responsibility. I’m expecting from all municipalities, all bodies to continue providing help to all the veterans. And we have representatives of regions who constantly are in contact with veterans, who constantly support families who go to the frontline to support the troops. We are talking about the supply, about payments and benefits in case they’re wounded and local governors addressing me and reporting to me on the result of their work. And they’re saying that there are certain issues that are not resolved yet and we need to work on those. We all understand very well that the needs of the special military operation are connected to great burden, psychological, physiological, financial. All participants of the special military operation especially, and including the volunteers, they need to have 14 days of rest every year, in addition to the travel time.

(37:03)
Dear colleagues, we have an approved plan of creation of a military force for the 2023, 2025, and we are working on it and correcting it as we go. And I’d like to emphasize the further steps on strengthening our navy and army. We have to rely in these steps, on our real military experience. This is extremely important. This is invaluable. For example, the level supply and readiness of our nuclear military forces is in the region of 91%. Taking into account the experience that we received, we have to achieve that level of supply for all other areas of army and navy. Offices and sergeants who demonstrates on themselves to be decisive and clever and brave, they should be forwarded to the military academies and they should become a very powerful training reserve. And they have to become people in demand, both in the military and in the civil sector. We need to understand that we need to value their contribution to the defense of our motherland.

(38:52)
We will continue implementing the latest technologies which will improve the quality of our army. These developments and these types of equipment and weapons are already there, some of them are exceeding the parameters of western equipment. And our objective is to create a mass production of these weapons using our own industrial and scientific base using state contracts and involving small and medium enterprise. We have scientific teams, engineering teams, and we have more and more of younger people, qualified people in these teams and we have very long traditions of weapon production and weapon manufacturing. And everything needs to be done for the victory. We need to provide guarantees for employees and we are talking about the social benefits and also salaries. And I’m proposing to provide special program for housing. And the rent in this housing would be significantly lower than the market rent and the difference will be covered by the state. That’s for the employees of the defense sector. We will work on the details of this program and we will immediately start building this housing, especially in the cities which are our military and engineering centers.

(40:52)
Dear colleagues, as I mentioned, the west has begun not just the military and information, but also an economic aggression, but they have not achieved success in either of these areas and they won’t achieve success there. Moreover, the initiators of the sanctions are punishing themselves. They provoked a growth of prices in their own countries, closures of factories, collapse of energy sector. They’re telling their citizens that it’s the Russians who are to blame and they’ve used different tools. They try to break commercial connections with our companies, they try to restrict our expert. And the theft, I can’t name it any other way, theft of our currency reserves and also attacks on our infrastructure. I’d like to emphasize that all sanctions are just a means, but the objective, as the West says, and I say directly, to force our citizens to suffer. This is their humanistic approach. They are trying to destabilize our society from inside, but their attempts were not justified and were not successful.

(42:40)
And thanks to joint work of our government, of the Bank of Russia, of the subjects of the Russian Federation of Working People, we were able to ensure stability of economic situation. We preserved employment, we supported our financial system, business people who are investing in the development of their business and therefore in the development of the country. We’ve launched a package of measures to support the economy totalling in the region of three trillion rubles. I’d like to point out that this is not a money printing policy. All of that is based on market principles. At the end of 2022, the GDP is reduced. Yesterday that information was published and I remember they were saying that our economy will drop 20, 25% and I was saying 2.9 and then later we were saying GDP reduced by 2.2%. And I’d like to remind you that in February, March, they were forecasting total collapse. Russian business has restricted its logistics and has established connections with predictable partners and there are many of those in the world, majority of them in the world. And in terms of international payments, the volume of payments has increased.