The Times: Putin’s long speech accelerating the war

The Times posted an article by Roger Boyes regarding the Russian President Vladimir Putin speech he made on Tuesday, in which he seemingly decided with his long speech to speed up the war.

The Russian president gave his speech in the same uncompromising spirit as usual, after a year, Putin still calls the war a special operation, not a war, but he seemed more resolute than ever to create a war economy and a war society that will only taste victory when Kiev submits to his will.

Putin, who didn’t knock out the government of Vladimir Zelensky, seeks to make the 2023 election campaign give him victory in the 2024 elections.

He refers to the US President, John Biden, who did the same with his visit to Ukraine.

He adds that Stalin, in an attempt to galvanize the Red Army after the German invasion in 1941, faced two contradictory tasks, imposing general mobilization from above, and preparing society to accept the huge human sacrifice.

Four million soldiers were killed, captured or disappeared in the war, in the first year of the war.

However, Putin has few methods of persuasion, but he knows that he must mobilize the effort of the whole of society in the war, if he wants to break the resolve of Western-backed Ukrainians.

He ordered the return of army officers who had seen mistakes in Ukraine to military schools for counseling and education there, and decided to revive the country’s military industry, encourage basic research in technology, raise teacher’s wages, and grant social protection to families of war victims.

In his speech, he mocked businessmen and the wealthy, who complained about the freezing of their assets in the West, telling them, you dealt with the West as a safe haven, and here they are, as I expected, robbing you.

In order to justify the general mobilization and sending the Russian youth to war, he talked about protecting Mother Russia from the West, which is worn out, but it was clear that he wasn’t convinced of what he was saying.