Roving Periscope: “War unleashed on Russia,” claims Putin

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: After 440 days of invading Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday claimed that the world is at a “turning point”, and that a “war” had been unleashed against Russia.

Russia started a “special military campaign” against Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The fierce and bloody war, which Moscow initially fancied would be over in 48 or 72 hours, is going on unabated with both sides suffering heavy casualties. In particular, the Russian shelling has reduced much of Ukraine to rubble, forcing millions of its people to flee to the neighboring countries.

Both countries have accused each other of plotting to eliminate their presidents.

Addressing a military parade at the Soviet-style event to celebrate Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany (1945), Putin vowed that Russia would win the war against Ukraine also and that Moscow’s future rested on its brave soldiers fighting this war.

“Today, civilization is again at a decisive turning point,” Putin said at the parade, which included elderly veterans and soldiers from Russia’s Ukraine campaign.

“A war has been unleashed against our motherland,” he claimed, the media reported.

Putin called for Russia to be victorious: “For Russia, for our armed forces, for victory! Hurrah!”

Increasingly, President Putin has been portraying the Ukraine campaign as an existential conflict, which he asserted the West has escalated by supporting, funding, and arming the Ukrainian government.

He told the hundreds of Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine at the Red Square parade that “the whole country is with you.”

“There is nothing more important now than your war efforts,” he said.

“Russia’s security rests on you today, and so does the future of our statehood and our people.”

The Russian leader also railed against what he dubbed the “Western globalist elites,” accusing them of sowing conflicts and “coups” around the world.

“Their goal, and there is nothing new here, is to achieve the collapse and destruction of Russia,” he said.

Putin, a former KGB spy who became Russia’s President in the year 2000, vowed that Moscow would overcome this crisis.

“We have rebuffed international terrorism, we will protect the people of (eastern Ukraine’s) Donbas, we will ensure our security,” he declared.

These remarks appeared to be a reference to an unprecedented series of Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil in the run-up to the Victory Day parade, a central event under Putin’s rule, the media added.