In Bishkek, Russian President Vladimir Putin shared the good news about the economic indicators and promised to think about how to respond to the U.S. doctrine of “preventive nuclear strike.” He also expressed regret that Merkel & Co. had been cheated out of the Minsk agreements, suggesting that Ukraine might have been worth starting an air defense system earlier.
Economics Comes First
At the end of last week, Putin made a working visit to Kyrgyzstan to participate in a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council, after which he gave a briefing to journalists, answering the most urgent questions on the agenda.
The statements made by the Russian leader are all the more important since next year, 2023, Russia will chair the EurAsEC. According to Putin, the meetings of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council and the Eurasian Economic Forum are scheduled for May 24-25, 2023. The venue is still under discussion. In addition, the Russian President recalled that an informal meeting of the CIS leaders will be held in St. Petersburg before the New Year.
Speaking of the important documents adopted in Bishkek, the attention should be paid to the decision to start negotiations with the United Arab Emirates on the launch of a free trade zone.
Since EurAsEC is an economic union, it is logical that the President's briefing began with economics. Recall that, speaking at the EurAsEC summit, Putin repeatedly compared the macroeconomic indicators of Russia and the EU. In terms of the unemployment rate, inflation, gas prices, etc. Russia and the EurAsEC were ahead of the EU. Apparently, the President enjoyed drawing such parallels, so once again he was happy to repeat the figures in front of journalists.
It is fair to say that against the backdrop of economic crisis in the US and the EU, Russia is doing really well. Though, as Putin himself admits, “things could have been better.” At the same time, Russian President put to shame detractors who predicted terrible economic disasters in Russia, but miscalculated in their “forecasts.”
Putin recalled that “they predicted the economic decline in Russia by 20%, and there is a decline, but it is 2.9%.”
“This, of course, is a big difference, and we understand that those who predicted us such a development, were greatly mistaken, and we just did not make a mistake,” said the Russian President.
Although Putin acknowledged that there is a recession, “but the situation is actually better than in many other countries on a number of fronts.” For example, according to Putin, the inflation rate in Russia is 12.2-12.3%, while in the EU countries it is 17-20% and even more.
As for the Eurasian Economic Union, according to the President, “the situation is stable.” As an example, Putin cited the unemployment rate, which is lower than in many other countries.
“I Woke up in Middle of Night and Realized That Everything was Going According to Plan”
We have become accustomed to the fact that no matter what Putin talks about at a briefing, the topic of the special military operation in Ukraine will be undoubtedly touched upon. Now, Konstantin Panyushkin from the Channel One asked for clarification of what Vladimir Putin meant when he said, at a recent meeting with members of the Human Rights Council, that “this will be a long process.” Panyushkin also asked for an explanation of the much-talked-about phrase: “If Russia doesn't use nuclear weapons first, it means it won't use the second one either.”
At first glance, Putin answered this question quite clearly, saying that “the special military operation goes on as planned, and everything is stable. There are no problems there.”
This seems to be true but it's not. Considering that we had to conduct a “regrouping,” leaving Kherson and the right bank of the Dnieper. Taking into account the September-October “redeployment,” as a result of which Kupyansk was left and together with it a large part of the Kharkiv Region. Taking into account the fact that at the first stage Russian troops were conducting offensive actions, and by the fall they were forced to switch to defense along the entire front line, except for Artemovsk (Bakhmut) in Donbass.
Therefore, Putin's answer should rather be understood to mean that he does not want to discuss the problems of the special military operation in fact.
At the same time, Putin once again made it clear that the Kremlin is ready for negotiations, but all the participants need to prepare for the fact that “the process of settlement ... will not be easy and will require some time.” Most importantly, that “all participants in this process will have to accept the realities that are emerging on the ground.”
What Putin Actually Said About use of Nuclear Weapons
After Putin's words about nuclear weapons, many media outlets started spreading bogus stories, attributing to the Russian President what he did not say.
In reality, Putin explained that the US has two concepts in service: a preventive nuclear strike and a disarming nuclear strike. Everything is clear with the preventive approach. It is a “hit first” nuclear strike on the territory of an enemy. To decipher Putin's words, the disarming one means a missile strike targeting command and control centers in order to deprive the enemy of his “brain” in the form of the military command and the political leadership.
Putin explained that Russia had been losing to the U.S. in cruise missiles until a certain time. He said that Russia and the US had destroyed their ground-based missiles, but Washington still had sea- and air-launched cruise missiles. Since Russia had no such missiles, Moscow was in a vulnerable position. But at the moment, as the Russian president explained, Russia has cruise missiles that are even more advanced and effective.
Putin explained that when it comes to the “disarming strike,” Russia is in a better position because it possesses hypersonic weapons that the United States does not yet have in service. So, the Russian President said that given this situation, maybe Moscow should adopt the U.S. concept of a “disarming strike.” To disarm whoever needs to be disarmed, if necessary. To disarm them to the point of no return.
“So, if we're going to talk about this disarming strike, maybe we should think about adopting the experience of our American partners and their ideas of how to ensure their own security. We're just thinking about it. No one was ashamed of talking about it out loud in previous times and years,” said Putin.
At the same time, the President of the Russian Federation explained that the Russian strategy does not include a “preventive strike,” which is officially enshrined in the military documents of the United States, but a “retaliatory strike.”
In common terms, if the domestic early-warning system detects missile launches from U.S. territory, the Kremlin gives the command to retaliate by launching hundreds of Russian missiles with nuclear warheads. However, even if the enemy missiles can be intercepted, the warheads will still fall on the territory of Russia. The Russian President warned that “nothing will remain of the enemy, because it is impossible to intercept hundreds of missiles.” Putin added that “of course this is a serious deterrent.” Putin did not specify for whom this “deterrent” is, but it is clear from the context that the US is in question.
In this connection, Putin said that the Russian leadership is thinking about how to deal with the threat of a “preventive nuclear strike.”
“But if a potential adversary believes that it is possible to use the theory of a preventive strike and we do not, it still makes us think about the threats posed to us by such ideas in the defense of other countries,” the Russian President said.
So, if you see headlines, saying ‘Putin Threatens World With Pre-Emptive Nuclear Strike’ (which the foreign media is guilty of doing), you should know that this is cheap manipulation and a bald-faced lie. Still, threatening nuclear weapons and thinking about how to respond to the U.S. concept of “preventive strike” are different things.
If we compare it with the words of a neighboring country's president, who not so long ago directly called for nuclear “preventive strikes” against Russia, it all sounds very intelligent and mild. Even former British Prime Minister Liz Truss, before her untimely resignation, explicitly declared her willingness to use nuclear weapons.
You Tricked me
TASS's Yulia Bubnova asked to comment on the sensational words of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said that the German authorities did not expect Kiev to implement the Minsk agreements, but in fact, they needed them to give Ukraine time to breathe and prepare for war against Russia.
Putin admitted that for himself “it was totally unexpected. It's disappointing.” According to him, it seemed to him that the West Germany was playing on the side of Ukraine, but that it was still in favor of a peaceful settlement in Donbas based on the principles laid out, among others, in the Minsk agreements.
But in fact it turns out that Merkel, like Petro Poroshenko before her, played along with Putin. He used Merkel's confession as an argument that “we did everything right in terms of launching a special military operation.” In general, according to the Russian President, since “all these Minsk agreements no one was going to implement, the leadership of Ukraine in the words of former President Poroshenko also said about it: signed, but did not intend to implement,” then perhaps, the special military operation should have been started even earlier.
“Still, I was counting on the other participants in this process to be sincere with us. It turns out they were deceiving us, too. The point was only to pump Ukraine with weapons and prepare for combat operations. We see that, yes. Apparently, we were late in the game, frankly. Maybe we should have started all this earlier. We just hoped that we would be able to reach an agreement within the framework of these peaceful Minsk agreements,” Putin said.
So, it turns out that Merkel and Poroshenko are conniving liars. Who would have thought it?!
Here the question arises if all this looks convincing. After all, if Kiev has not complied with the Minsk agreements for seven years (although, for example, prisoner exchanges took place periodically), and NATO has been insidiously pumping Ukraine with weapons and training the army, who prevented the Kremlin from seeing all this? Perhaps someday we will find out that the wizard is who is able to make such large-scale processes invisible.
Even Victor Bout, who served 14 years in an American prison, in his first interview expressed himself in the style of “I don't understand why they didn't start earlier.”
Still, Putin decided to end his conversation with the media on an optimistic note, saying, referring to the negotiation process with Western countries, that “in the end, we will have to come to an agreement anyway.”
“I've said many times that we're ready for these agreements,” the Russian President said in conclusion.
Keep off bad Luck
In addition, Putin reiterated that a new wave of mobilization is not planned. According to Putin, up to half of the 300,000 or 150,000 people who are mobilized are still being trained at training centers and firing ranges.
There was also a question about the prospects of the “triple gas union,” Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Judging by the way Putin easily demonstrated his knowledge of the specifics of gas production and supply in the Russia-Kazakhstan-Uzbekistan triangle, the Kremlin has a serious interest in creating such an alliance. By the way, as Putin made clear, the “gas” factor could be a serious incentive for Uzbekistan to join the EurAsEC.
Kommersant correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov tried to ask a burning question, asking about the prison term for Ilya Yashin (the day before he received 8.5 years in prison for spreading fakes about the army), but Putin put him in his place and asked “Who is this?”
“Don't you think that 8.5 years for words is some brutal sentence?” Kolesnikov asked.
Putin stressed that he considers “absolutely unacceptable” interference in the courts' work, and expressed hope that “Mr. Yashin's lawyers surely know what they have to do.” In short, we didn't get to talk about it.
In conclusion, it should be said that the theme of the EurAsEC will resound in the coming years. The fact is that due to the division of the world into spheres of influence, the role of effective military, political and economic alliances should increase dramatically. There are a lot of talks about a multipolar world in the media. A multipolar world is the division of the world into spheres of influence. In this connection, the need for all kinds of economic and politico-military alliances grows sharply because we have the example of Ukraine, which “played dumb” and could not decide whom to join. As a result, the US and the EU carried out a coup d'état in 2014, after which they put Ukraine's labor force, industry and land resources at the service of their interests. Since then, NATO has been using Ukraine's territory and military potential to the fullest as its battleground.