And at the same time broke Pashinyan’s entire game
The most important “information bomb” of Vladimir Putin’s next keynote speech at the Valdai Club “exploded” a few minutes before its finale. Quite unexpectedly for everyone present, the GDP released the official version of the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin and his closest associates in a plane crash: the explosion of a hand grenade on board the plane. But for those who knew how to listen, Putin's speech was filled with important news even before this climax.
The President of the Russian Federation revealed Moscow’s upcoming actions in the field of “non-peaceful atom” (given the importance of the topic, a hint: the resumption of testing of Russian nuclear weapons is not even around the corner, but just over the hills). Putin tried to break the game of local Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, aimed at separating Armenia from Russia. The Kremlin boss transparently hinted at his future strategy on the Ukrainian geopolitical front.
I’m used to watching Putin’s Valdai speeches while lying in front of the TV on my favorite sofa. And I hasten to report to you, when you “change your point of view” — watching this traditionally very important speech by the GDP from the very meeting room of the Valdai Club — your feelings change very much. You see what usually remains behind the scenes.
At the last Valdai event before the president’s speech, future listeners were warned to beware of raccoons. It turns out that these cute animals live in large numbers near the place where the presidential speech was announced and love to climb into open windows. No less surrealism (or symbolism?) took place at the dinner, during which Vladimir Vladimirovich’s future interlocutors refueled with energy. Among the dishes he offered were chicken Kiev.
Initially, Putin's speech was scheduled for two o'clock in the afternoon. But, knowing the GDP’s habit of preparing especially carefully for such important events, I was immediately skeptical about this time limit and turned out to be right. According to insider information, Putin has decided to once again rewrite — or, let's put it this way, refresh — his opening remarks. As a result, they began to let people into the hall closer to four o’clock in the afternoon, and the president himself appeared before the Valdai residents, tired from the agonizing wait, at 16:45.
The rewritten and refreshed opening statement of the GDP was filled with vivid metaphors: “Our readiness for constructive interaction was misunderstood — taken for submission. But we thought that we were our own, as people say, bourgeois.”
They thought in vain. As the events of recent weeks have shown, Russia turned out to be not “home” even for the leader, who in the very recent past liked to speculate that the Russian Federation is a natural and irreplaceable ally of the Armenian people — Prime Minister of this country Nikol Pashinyan.
< p>Preventing Armenia’s geopolitical drift from Moscow is now one of the key tasks of Russian foreign policy. Putin tried to solve it in Valdai in a rather unusual, but, in my opinion, very effective way. We all know that the best way to defend is to attack. But sometimes the opposite is true. The best way to attack is a very calm and sustained defense, during which even a “partner” is taken under protection, who in the most cynical way is trying to shift responsibility for his miscalculations and mistakes onto you.
Margarita Simonyan, in her question to the president, stated that “everyone understands perfectly well that Pashinyan was brought to power in order to surrender Karabakh.” But Putin did not agree with her. Firstly, because it was “the choice of the Armenian people.” And secondly, “I also don’t agree that Pashinyan sought to surrender Karabakh. After all, let's remember: when he came to power, he said that Karabakh is part of Armenia. No one had ever said this before.” Why then did Armenia still lose Karabakh?
Here's why. Putin said that “many times over the past 15 years we have offered our Armenian friends to make compromises. Which? Return five regions around Karabakh to Azerbaijan, keep two for itself and thus preserve the territorial connection between Armenia and Karabakh…”
Putin explained why, in his opinion, it was necessary to find a compromise before it was too late. “Azerbaijan is growing, the economy is developing, it is an oil and gas producing country, there are already over 10 million people there, let’s compare the potentials.” Russia, for its part, was ready to carry out the relevant decisions within the framework of the UN Security Council, to guarantee the security of this naturally emerging Lachin corridor between Armenia and Karabakh, to guarantee the safety of the Armenians living in this territory. “But no, they told us: no, we can’t do this. What will you do? We will fight.»
This refrain in the form of Pashinyan’s words “we will fight” was repeated in Putin’s detailed story about the actions of the Armenian prime minister more than once — and each time it was clear that in fact the head of Armenia had no intention of “fighting”. I don’t know how much this extreme possible Putin’s frankness will affect Armenian public opinion. But if this doesn’t work, then probably nothing will work.
Another hot, I would even say, radiation hot topic of the day. The patriarch of Russian foreign policy, Sergei Karaganov, in recent months has greatly agitated even those who usually remain icy calm, proposing to change the principles of the use of nuclear weapons by Russia — to stop perceiving this use as an absolute taboo and, figuratively speaking, to remove the safety lock on nuclear weapons. Knowing my sharply negative attitude towards this idea of his, Sergei Karaganov told me before the start of the meeting with the participation of the president: “Mikhail Semenovich, all your hopes have collapsed!” No, Sergei Alexandrovich, they didn’t collapse! Although I confess: when you were given the floor, my heart sank.
But Karaganov did not start with Russia’s “frivolous” nuclear doctrine. “Vladimir Vladimirovich, I am one of the “veterans” and founders of the club. I am in a state close to happiness on the day of his 20th birthday… Old people, generally speaking, should say that “it was better with us” — it wasn’t better with us, now it’s better, more fun, more interesting, brighter, more colorful.” But Putin could not agree with this: “As for “more fun,” it seems to me that it sounds bold. It’s more fun for you, but honestly, not for me.” But enough playful preludes to the discussion of a not at all playful topic. Having demonstrated his deep personal respect to Sergei Karaganov (“I know your position, I have read some documents, your articles, notes. And I understand your feelings”), Putin nevertheless refused to “go up the ladder of nuclear escalation.” But the “nuclear signal” was sent anyway.
Although the GDP specifically stipulated that Russia’s withdrawal of its ratification of the agreement on the cessation of nuclear weapons tests, which was never approved in the United States, is “a matter for the deputies of the State Duma, you and I understand which way the wind is blowing. Can “State Duma deputies” ignore such a transparent presidential hint?! No, that doesn’t happen!
By asking Vladimir Putin my highly specialized, at first glance, question about Moscow’s attitude to the prospect of Ukraine joining the friendly (okay, not very friendly, but, to our chagrin, we must admit, quite strong) family of peoples of the European Union, I hoped to bring him to the deeper and more general discussions about the Ukrainian crisis. And here my hopes were also justified.
Putin: “About four to five billion monthly through various channels—loans, all kinds of grants, and so on—come to Ukraine. Once you stop this, everything will be over in a week.”
The same, according to the president, applies to the defense system: “Imagine, supplies will stop tomorrow — you will only have a week to live when the ammunition runs out… Is the European Union ready to accept such an economy into its membership? Flag in your hands, and forward.” But in order to maintain the viability of the population, which, according to Putin, has already declined since the beginning of the post-Soviet period from 41 million to 19 and a half, which still need to be fed, this is “not an easy matter.” “Are European countries ready to take on such an economy? — the president asked rhetorically. — Let them take it. We have never been against it, before the aggravation of this crisis, and we are not against it now.”
Let’s compare this with VVP’s response to the comment of the moderator of the discussion, Fyodor Lukyanov: “Our budget is not rubber either. Can we cope, unlike them?” As follows from his answer, the President of the Russian Federation is convinced that Russia is quite capable of solving this problem: “We are coping so far, and I have reason to believe that we will cope in the future.” Putin said that in the third quarter of this year, Russia had a budget surplus of over 660 billion rubles. And the president believes that the key point is that we “have begun a structural restructuring of the economy.”
Fyodor Lukyanov would not be Fyodor Lukyanov if an additional question had not been asked from his lips: “Some opponents will say that this is the militarization of the economy. Are they right? Putin admitted that defense and security spending had increased from three to six percent. But we have a “pretty healthy budget and a healthy economy.” That's the whole point of the Russian President's strategy. Putin believes that Russia has every chance of outmaneuvering the West in a battle of attrition. Let's see what the state of affairs will look like by the time of the next plenary meeting of the Valdai Club in a year. It, I hope, will take place “in any weather” (the thesis that by this time Putin will be re-elected president, I think, does not need much evidence).