Vladimir Putin’s message in his State of the Nation speech on Tuesday was “ineffective” because of its contradictions, according to UK intelligence.
The president addressed the country’s elite for the first time since 2021, even though this speech is meant to be annual, and spent an hour and 45 minutes lambasting the West for supposedly turning Ukraine against Russia.
Putin was originally meant to deliver this speech back in December, but Russia had just experienced a series of military setbacks in the Ukraine war.
While the situation is relatively similar two months later, on Friday it will be the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of its European neighbour so this address was a means to shore up support ahead of the symbolic day.
But, according to the UK’s ministry of defence, there was a significant flaw with the whole speech – it was ineffective.
In its latest update on Wednesday, the MoD said: “Putin continued the bellicose tone he has adopted in speeches over the last six months but did not reveal any practical measures which might relieve Russia’s current deadlock on the battlefield.
“Putin continues to present a contradictory narrative of existential struggle while insisting everything in Russia is fine and going to plan.
“This renders both messages ineffective.”
The Kremlin originally believed Russian forces would be able to overpower Kyiv within a matter of days.
Instead, after a year of bitter fighting and the death of around estimated 200,000 Russian troops, Moscow only controls around 18% of Ukraine – and is struggling to move forward.
To make matters worse, its main recent victory came via the paramilitary Wagner Group, a collection of mercenaries who are locking horns with the main Russian army.
Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has just accused the Russian military chiefs of “treason” by denying his fighters ammunition and trying to “destroy” his group.
During Tuesday’s speech (where the crowd looked noticeably bored), Putin did also emphasise that he had no intention of pulling out of the “special military operation” in Ukraine – this is how Russia has described the war ever since it began.
He also repeated his baseless claims that Ukraine is run by Nazis, too, before alleging that the West had turned Ukraine against Russia and escalated the conflict.
“They intend to transform a local conflict into a phase of global confrontation. This is exactly how we understand it all and we will react accordingly, because in this case we are talking about the existence of our country.”
Putin also hinted that he would pivot away from the “wolfish” habits of the West and towards Asia instead, and said he would suspend Russia’s role in the New Start nuclear treaty with the US.
This is meant to stop how many strategic nuclear warheads that the US and Russia can deploy, and the deployment of land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.
While this is not the same as leaving the treaty, it still caused worry among world leaders about what this meant as a nuclear threat.