Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown no regrets for his war in Ukraine, insisting the “special military operation” was still achieving its goals and the West’s dominance over world affairs is coming to an end.
Inveighing against the West for more than three-and-a-half hours on Thursday in a question-and-answer session at an annual foreign policy conference in Moscow, Putin appeared confident and relaxed, a marked contrast from stiff, formal and uneasy public appearances early in the war.
Asked if there had been any disappointments in the past year, Putin answered simply: “No”, though he also said he always thinks about Russians lost in Ukraine.
The speech contained a familiar litany of grievances against “our Western opponents”, who he said faced the inevitable crumbling of their “hegemony”. Liberal Western leaders had undermined “traditional values” around the world, foisting a culture with “dozens of genders, gay parades” on other countries.
Putin accused the West of inciting the war in Ukraine and of playing a “dangerous, bloody and dirty” game that was sowing chaos across the world.
“The historical period of the West’s undivided dominance over world affairs is coming to an end,” the 70-year-old former KGB spy said.
“We are standing at a historical frontier: Ahead is probably the most dangerous, unpredictable and, at the same time, important decade since the end of World War II.”
The conflict, which began eight months ago with an invasion by Russian forces of neighbouring Ukraine, has killed thousands of people, displaced millions, shaken the global economy and reopened Cold War-era divisions.
Later, when drawn more directly into discussion of the war, Putin made no mention of Russia’s battlefield setbacks of recent months, or of steps he has ordered in response, such as calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists, which has led to thousands of men fleeing abroad.
When the event’s host referred obliquely to public concern about whether the operation was still “going according to plan” as Russian officials have maintained since the outset, Putin said its aims had not changed.
Fighting has been going on in eastern Ukraine since 2014 between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatists.
In his speech, Putin played down a nuclear standoff with the West, insisting Russia had not threatened to use nuclear weapons and had only responded to nuclear “blackmail” from Western leaders.
He and other Russian officials have repeatedly said in recent weeks that Russia could use nuclear weapons to protect its territorial integrity, remarks interpreted in the West as implicit threats to use them to defend parts of Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed. Scores of countries have condemned the move as illegal.
He also repeated Russia’s latest allegation – that Ukraine was planning to use a so-called “dirty bomb” to spread nuclear material, which the United States, Britain and France have called “transparently false”. Putin said the Ukrainians would carry out such an attack to blame Russia.
A suggestion by Kyiv that the Russian charge might mean Moscow plans to detonate a “dirty bomb” itself was false, he said.
“We don’t need to do that. There would be no sense whatsoever in doing that,” Putin said.
Both Russia and NATO are carrying out annual drills of their nuclear forces this week, and Russia has given the exercises an unusually high profile, showing off missiles, submarines and strategic bombers on state TV.
Putin’s remarks were not very new and did not indicate a change in his strategic goals, including in Ukraine, the White House said.
Fighting on the ground appears to have slowed in recent days, with Ukrainian officials saying tough terrain and bad weather had held up their main advance in southern Kherson province.
