Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: On the 48th day of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the West and its allies on Tuesday that their attempts to isolate Moscow or hold it back would fail, as he compared Moscow’s successes in the Space Age despite similar sanctions in the 1950s and 1960s.
According to the Russian state TV, he cited the success of the Soviet space program as evidence that Russia could defy sanctions and achieve spectacular leaps forward in tough conditions.
He said Russia will never again depend on the West after the US and its allies imposed crippling sanctions on it to punish him for his February 24 order for what he called a “special military operation” in Ukraine.
His remarks came at Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s Far East, some 5,550 km from Moscow, where he reminded the people of the Soviet Union’s achievements in the space era.
In 1961, Soviet pilot and cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin became the first human to journey into outer space. Traveling in the Vostok 1 capsule, he completed one orbit of the Earth on April 12, 1961.
Reminding the Russians of this feat, Putin said: “The sanctions were total, the isolation was complete but the Soviet Union was still first in space… We don’t intend to be isolated… It is impossible to severely isolate anyone in the modern world – especially such a vast country as Russia,” he said.
During the Cold War, Russian successes like Gagarin’s space flight and, earlier, the 1957 launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite from Earth, had shocked the West, leading to the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), among others, to catch up with Moscow’s advancements.
Putin said he had no doubts Russia would achieve all of its objectives in Ukraine. “Its goals are absolutely clear and noble… It’s clear that we didn’t have a choice. It was the right decision,” he claimed to justify the war.
But its adverse effects are piling up. Russia’s economy may contract by over 10 percent in 2022, the biggest fall in its GDP since the years following the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, former finance minister Alexei Kudrin said on Tuesday.
Putin toured the spaceport in Russia’s far east with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. “Why an earth are we getting so worried about these sanctions?” Lukashenko wondered, according to Russian state television.