Putin’s four-hour Q&A is a valuable insight into the Russian president’s version of reality

Russian tv audiences didn’t have a lot alternative however to observe Vladimir Putin’s annual press convention on December 14 – it was broadcast on all terrestrial TV networks. After a 12 months’s hiatus in 2022, when the success of the Ukrainian autumn counteroffensive meant there was little excellent news to speak about, Putin returned to the airwaves for a four-hour press convention and phone-in Q&A session through which he answered pre-approved questions and boosted his candidacy for subsequent 12 months’s elections.

There have been reportedly 600 journalists current, the overwhelming majority of them from Russian information shops. Viewers had been handled to Putin because the “man of the individuals”, prepared to reply questions that had been, on the face of it, mildly important of the “particular navy operation” and the impact it had on extraordinary individuals’s lives.

Questions that got here in by way of textual content had been displayed on a display within the press convention room, similar to: “Inform us, when will our lives get higher?” and “Howdy, How can one transfer to the Russia that they discuss on Channel One?” – which seemed to be a reference to the pro-government state broadcaster.

However the occasion was clearly closely stage-managed and designed to replicate a management that’s totally in command of occasions and assured in each profitable the battle in Ukraine and an additional six-year time period of workplace in subsequent 12 months’s elections.

A rustic at battle

The battle, or the “particular navy operation”, as it’s nonetheless euphemistically recognized, was a dominant theme all through the four-hour occasion. Putin informed viewers that Russia is making advances on all fronts and that “there can be peace after we obtain our objectives. They haven’t modified. Denazification of Ukraine, the demilitarisation of Ukraine.”

Putin reiterated his fixed theme of Ukraine as a nation of ultra-nationalists, elevating the reminiscence of Stepan Bandera. Bandera’s organisation collaborated with the Nazis in the course of the second world battle to battle Soviet occupation of Ukraine, and took half within the wholesale homicide of Jews and Poles. Within the context of renewed Russian aggression, his legacy has turn into ever extra hotly contested.

It has lengthy been a key level of propaganda for Putin – as has his argument that Ukrainians and Russians are basically one individuals: “What is going on now’s an immense tragedy; it is sort of a civil battle between brothers who stand on totally different sides [of the conflict].”

Putin additionally addressed the query of mobilisation, arguing that since so many individuals had been volunteering to battle, one other wave of mobilisation could be pointless: “There are 1,500 volunteer fighters being recruited daily all through the nation. So, along with the volunteers there can be about half 1,000,000 individuals by the top of this 12 months … So, what do we’d like mobilisation for? There may be completely no want for it as we speak.”

The financial system and sanctions

Putin was very bullish in regards to the well being of Russia’s financial system, with unemployment falling to three% and actual wages apparently rising by 8% after permitting for inflation, which is reportedly working at 7.5%. Many analysts have linked this obvious resurgence within the Russian financial system with huge will increase in navy spending, or “navy Keynesianism”, which has considerably boosted Russia’s industrial output.

Whereas admitting that inflation was an issue (Putin apologised to at least one pensioner for the excessive worth of eggs), Putin remarked that financial progress as measured by GDP had rebounded from 2022, when it fell by 2.1% to a constructive 3.5% this 12 months, “it means we have now recouped the losses and have taken a major step ahead”.

Putin additionally made a substantial amount of what he known as “sovereignty”. His understanding of the time period appears to be Russia’s isolation from the norms of the worldwide system. “For a rustic like Russia, existence, mere existence, is not possible with out sovereignty. With out sovereignty, Russia would stop to exist, a minimum of within the kind it exists as we speak and has existed for a thousand years.”

Worldwide relations

As normal the west – or western elites – had been painted because the supply of all worldwide tensions, with European nations (aside from Hungary and Slovakia, which each have pro-Russian governments) painted as Washington’s lapdogs, doing America’s bidding.

He additionally accused Nato of going “past the statutory objectives of this organisation, the North Atlantic bloc” by turning its focus in direction of Asia. Russia and China, in the meantime: “are usually not doing something of the type. Sure, we’re engaged in navy, financial and humanitarian cooperation, however we aren’t creating any blocs”.

He additionally linked what he described because the rise in Islamophobia and antisemitism to Russophobia, at occasions blaming the western media for fomenting anti-Russian sentiment.

The longer term

Because the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches, many individuals query whether or not – and why – the Russian individuals acquiesce to the battle in Ukraine. With dissent criminalised, Putin’s approval rankings seem to stay excessive, in keeping with current polling by the revered Levada Centre.

And with virtually full management of the information media in Russia, a brand new era of schoolchildren being taught a Kremlin-sanctioned view of historical past, and plans for veterans to coach schoolchildren, Putin goals to make sure it stays that means.

Requested what he would say to the Vladimir Putin who got here to energy in 2000, he mentioned: “I might say: you’re heading in the right direction, comrades. What would I warn him in opposition to? Towards naivety and extreme belief in our so-called companions.”