Putin Says The Ukraine War Poses An Existential Threat To The ‘Russian People’

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Russian President Putin delivers his annual address to the Federal Assembly in Moscow © Thomson Reuters  

The Hill: Putin says Ukraine war poses existential threat to ‘Russian people’ 

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a new interview that Russian people may not survive if Western countries succeed in handing a “strategic defeat” to Moscow in its war in Ukraine. 

Putin’s comments to state TV channel Russia 1 followed his decision to suspend Russia’s involvement in the last remaining arms control treaty with the United States. 

 “In today’s conditions, when all the leading NATO countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?” Putin said, per Reuters.

Putin accused Western countries of seeking to divide Russia in order to take control of the country’s raw materials. “I do not even know if such an ethnic group as the Russian people will be able to survive in the form in which it exists today,” he said. Read more ….  

Update #1: Putin casts war as a battle for Russia’s survival (Reuters)
 

Update #2: Vladimir Putin accuses west of seeking to ‘dismember’ Russia (The Guardian) 

WNU Editor: He he is not the only one who is pushing this line …. Russia to be ‘torn to pieces’ if it stops special op without winning — Medvedev (TASS). More here …. Former Russian president sends warning to US (RT). 

As to what is my take.

I disagree with Russian President Putin’s view that the war in Ukraine poses an existential threat to the Russian people.

But I am a minority of one. Everyone I know in Russia is now on board with the Kremlin’s message that this conflict is an existential threat and can only end with a Russian victory.