As was to be expected, Putin explained once again, and this time in summary form for everyone to take note of, why he wants to recognize the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which have broken away from Ukraine, as independent.
In doing so, the president made out two enemy images above all: Ukraine and NATO.
The Second German Television writes: In many passages, Putin sounded like the reactionary Russian publicist Mikhail Katkov in the 19th century. Katkov said in 1863: „Ukraine never had a history of its own, never had a state of its own, the Ukrainian people has always been a purely Russian people, without which the Russian people cannot continue to be what it is now.“
But Ukrainians are not only nationalistic – they are also corrupt, Putin’s next accusation was. Corruption and power struggles by oligarchs would prevent the people in the ex-Soviet republic from getting better.
ZDF: „In fact, Ukraine is considered one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, but Putin conceals the fact that Russia is ranked even worse than Ukraine in a corresponding ranking by Transparency International.“
Why would Putin want to conceal this when the Western media have been reporting for weeks on how corrupt he and his immediate environment are? Putin can denounce the corruption in Ukraine regardless of the corruption in Russia. And while we are at it, what about the corruption in the EU and the U.S.?
Putin’s assumption that Ukraine is planning to develop nuclear weapons doesn’t seem so far-fetched to me, considering that Ukraine is the 10th largest arms exporter and wants to greatly expand the military-industrial complex*, one could already come to this assumption. In addition, there is Chernobyl, so there is enough fissile material.
Still in the morning the Russian state media had unleashed a whole avalanche of accusations against Ukraine:
Die Zeit writes:
Putin claims: „The Ukrainian army is on the verge of entering the areas in the east of the country controlled by pro-Russian fighters. Ukrainian soldiers had planned terrorist attacks and were taking artillery fire on civilians, he added. Russian FSB intelligence also provided footage of an alleged Ukrainian attack on a Russian border post in the Rostov region.“
Just because it wasn’t reported in the West doesn’t mean his accusations are false, that’s absurd.
Time continues, „Shortly thereafter, the two separatist leaders loyal to Moscow addressed Vladimir Putin in a video message, asking for „recognition of their independence“ and military assistance from Russia. Almost in parallel, Putin had already summoned the members of the Moscow Security Council to meet him in the Kremlin. The heads of the main intelligence agencies, speakers of both houses of parliament, foreign and defense ministers, the head of government, and also the vice chairman of the Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, nodded off this request in front of running cameras in brief appearances before Putin theatrically withdrew for several hours.“
What should be wrong with that, other than the „nodding off.“ What’s wrong with being „loyal to Moscow“? That Germans no longer have national pride is not a virtue, after all, and certainly not a valid counterargument.
It was only in the last part of his speech that Putin came to talk about NATO:
„The West could not accept that Russia would continue to exist in its size. That’s why even hypothetically possible NATO membership for Ukraine would be an existential threat to Russia.“
Where he is right, he is right, there is no doubt about that.
Putin also signed two friendship treaties between Russia and the two separatist republics; these treaties provide for a permanent Russian military presence.
Die Zeit reports:
„Especially as Putin ended his TV address with an ultimatum to Ukraine: the country, the Russian president said, must stop using force against the people’s republics now officially recognized by Russia. Otherwise, „the responsibility for further acts of war would lie entirely with the Kiev government,“ the president said. In recent days, Russia had been unable to credibly substantiate its accusations against Ukrainian forces with anything. In plain language, Putin’s threat likely meant that the Russian army remains on standby for a military strike against Ukraine.“
ZDF is pretending that this is the first time they have heard that there has been a war in the Donbas sit 8 years and 14,000 dead. The renegades can hardly have fought against themselves and murdered each other in this long time.
And at the very end I would like to add one more thing, Ukraine is not a member of NATO and has no right at all to attack the Russians militarily, at best they can supply weapons, no more and no less.
And Putin, under honest conditions and in front of the eyes of the world public, is guaranteed not to commit mass murder of Ukrainians, but to solve the matter appropriately and bring it to a less dramatic end.
Our governments must be stopped, they must be forced to recognize the truth and face it adequately as well, but not like this.
*Expansion of the defense industry, by Mychaylo Shyrokhov.
The future of Ukraine’s defense industry is in the hands of foreign investors. Despite the war, they provide financial resources for the development and modernization of weapons. For example, with the money of Saudi Arabia, a large scale of work was carried out on the operational and tactical missile complex „Hrim-2“ [Storm]. The modernization of the S-125 anti-aircraft missile system took place with the funds of a customer from Ethiopia. Ukraine will benefit from cooperation with foreign investors, as all developments remain the intellectual property of Ukrainian companies. This allows the development of models for arming the army. A brilliant example is the development of the research and production company „Radionix“ to produce active, semi-active and passive self-guided missiles for the „surface-to-air“, „air-to-air“ and „air-to-ground“ missile classes. One opportunity for Ukrainian arms manufacturers is the U.S. sanctions that Washington regularly imposes on the Russian military-industrial complex. Ukrainian companies can gain a foothold on the global arms market and find new niches for exports to countries for which the acquisition of Russian weapons is impossible for political reasons, and that of Western ones – for financial reasons. The current situation in military exports is not hopeless. There are certain areas where Ukraine can compete with Russia or Eastern Europe. Everything will depend on the efficiency of the top managers of „Ukroboronprom“ as well as private initiatives, as small companies have been given the opportunity to enter foreign markets without the total control of the state monopolist.
October 28, 2020 // Mychaylo Shyrokhov
https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2022-02/russland-ukraine-putin-rede-luhansk-donezk
https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/putin-rede-konflikt-ukraine-100.html
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
a-bigger-bang 
So true, Karlheinz. I was amazed.
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I can understand Putin very well, but I don’t understand why those who caused it just don’t want to admit that the EU enlargement to the East was a mistake, not in every case, but as far as the Baltic states are concerned it was.
JD 🌹, I have a question. In the German media it is reported that Donald said he would have „blown up Moscow long ago“.
I can’t believe that. It’s not like him. Is that what they say in America?
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Both Russia and Ukraine know how weak, dirty, and corrupt Joe Biden is.
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Hat dies auf Some View on the World rebloggt und kommentierte:
The editor of the daily Moskovskiye Vedomosti (“Moscow News”), and editor of the journal Russky Vestnik (“Russian Courier”) Mikhail Nikiforovich Katkov rightly might have said „Ukrainian people has always been a purely Russian people“, as a staunch chauvinist also writing articles favouring reactionary domestic policies and aggressive Pan-Slav foreign policies, we should see those ‚Rus‘ having years gone their own way and having developed differently than their northern neighbours.
When looking at the corruptness that would be in Ukraine, one should question who those corrupt people really are (the oligarchs) and why there can be so much criminality (because of the poverty).
Yesterday we could see proves of Russian fake messages but also of American fake messages. Video’s fabricated with voice tapes of events that happened 10 years ago, and soldiers who seemed to be Polish soldiers, instead of Ukraine soldiers.
It is unbelievable that such a good German state tv channel like the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), based in Mainz, would be pretending that they would have heard for the first time that there has been a war in the Donbas sit 8 years and 14,000 dead.
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