Putin’s vision for Russia’s next 6 years: Keep fighting, quit drinking, have babies

The Kremlin promised entertainment.

Western analysts feared Vladimir Putin would declare another war.

But the Russian president’s more than two-hour-long address on Thursday delivered on neither expectation, though Putin presented Russians with a vision of the future that alternated between nuclear saber-rattling and grand social promises. 

Speaking two days after France’s President Emmanuel Macron said the possibility of sending Western troops to Ukraine could not be “excluded,” Putin warned that NATO involvement on the ground in Ukraine could have “tragic” consequences. 

“They should understand that we also have weapons that can hit targets on their territory. All this threatens to result in a nuclear conflict, and therefore the destruction of civilization. Don’t they get that?” Putin asked an audience made up of Russia’s political, religious and military elite. 

He then accused Western leaders of treating the war in Ukraine — which Putin unilaterally escalated by launching a full-scale invasion in February 2022, shaking Europe’s security architecture to its core — like watching a “cartoon.”

Coming roughly two weeks before Putin is set to extend his rule for another six years in a presidential election of which the results are a foregone conclusion, the speech was as close to an electoral campaign as he is willing to get. 

In the run-up to Thursday’s address, the main intrigue had been whether he would use the opportunity to fuel tension in Moldova’s eastern breakaway region of Transnistria, which borders Ukraine and has a largely pro-Russian population. Russia has around 1,500 troops stationed in Transnistria, which it refers to as “peacekeepers.” 

Moscow officials in recent weeks have ramped up their rhetoric about the need to protect Russian citizens in Transnistria, in an ominous echo of the build up to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

Adding to concerns the Kremlin could expand its war westwards, Transnistrian officials on Wednesday gathered in a so-called congress of deputies, the first since 2006, and asked Russia to help it withstand economic “pressure” from the pro-EU government in Chișinău.  

On Thursday, Putin did not mention Transnistria explicitly, but dismissed reports that Russia was planning to attack Europe or that it would deploy nuclear weapons in space as “some kind of nonsense.”

Instead, he accused the West of trying to “trick” Russia into a Soviet-style arms race which would sink its economy, while simultaneously boasting about Moscow’s weapons arsenal.

Showing no intention of backing down on Ukraine, Putin reiterated the claim that Russia had not started the war, but added it would “do everything” to “eradicate Nazism, to defend the sovereignty of our citizens.”

‘Stop drinking and get on your skis’

The second half of Putin’s speech was dedicated to domestic issues with the president rattling off figures, government programs and social handouts for families, skating over any concerns Russians might have at a time of great economic and political uncertainty. 

“He promised everyone everything would become even better than it was [before the war], just by 2030,” Vladimir Pastukhov, a London-based political analyst, wrote on Telegram. 

Putin, who cut a relaxed figure, also called for the safeguarding of “traditional family values.”

“We see what is happening in some countries where moral norms and family institutions are deliberately being destroyed, pushing entire peoples to extinction and degeneration,” he said. “We choose life.” 

He also urged Russians to “stop drinking and get on your skis,” in order to increase Russia’s life expectancy. 

Meanwhile, he did not specify how many Russian soldiers had died on the front line in Ukraine, instead declaring a minute of silence in their honor, which finished after around 30 seconds. He also called upon veterans to be given a more central role in Russian business and education. 

“The real elite are those who serve Russia, laborers and military who have proven their loyalty to Russia with their actions,” Putin said, in a statement that appeared designed to pacify the military.

If such statements irked some in the audience who belong to the privileged political elite, however, they did not show it. Russian media noted Putin’s record-long Federal Assembly speech was interrupted with applause more than 80 times.

No mention of Navalny

“Basically, it was just a festival of extravagant generosity,” wrote independent analyst Abbas Gallyamov. 

But, he added, once the election is over, Russians await “unpopular measures: a new mobilization wave, the increase of fighting age and everything else they’ve thought of.” 

In a first, Putin’s address was not just shown on state TV but also in cinemas and on billboards, which Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov explained was the natural result of viewers’ demand for “interesting” content.

Photos shared by independent media showed half-empty auditoriums throughout the country, with some media reporting Russian students had been pressured to watch the address. 

Unsurprisingly, Putin made no mention of Alexei Navalny, his number one political foe, who died a sudden death in an Arctic penal colony earlier this month and whose funeral is set to take place Friday in Moscow. Navalny’s team has said they had experienced huge difficulties in finding a venue that would agree to host the funeral, after authorities previously refused to release the dissident leader’s body.

During the three years he was in prison, Navalny frequently sued the prison authorities for what he said were violations. In one such lawsuit, the opposition politician said in a humor-infused post on social media last July, he complained that prison officials had forced him to listen to Putin’s Federal Assembly speech from 2023 every evening for 100 days in a row. 

“I told the political officer of my colony: ‘Are you guys nuts? Can’t you at least put on different speeches? Putin sure has made plenty of them.’” 

Navalny said the prison officer answered: “Once Putin makes his next annual address, they’ll start playing it for us instead.”