By Paul Craig Roberts - March 18, 2022

In his speech to the assembly of national, regional, and district leaders on Russia’s response to the sanctions, Putin first factually describes the situation in Ukraine, how it developed, and Russia’s objective. It stands in striking contrast to Western propaganda.

Putin’s speech is also notable because he acknowledges that Russia has a fifth column that operates against her for the West:

“Yes, of course, they will try to rely on the so-called fifth column, on national traitors, on those who earn money here, but live there, and “live” not in the geographical sense of the word, but according to their slave consciousness.”

Putin then speaks of those Russians who have a villa in Miami or on the French Riviera, who cannot do without foie gras, oysters or so-called gender freedoms. These people are inherently mentally located there, and not in Russia, not with our people, not with Russia. Such people are ready to sell their mother, if only they were allowed to sit in the hallway of the West’s highest caste. They want to be to be part of the West. But they forget or do not understand that the West needs them only as expendable material to use to inflict maximum damage on our people.

“The collective West is trying to split our society, speculating on combat losses, on the socio-economic consequences of sanctions, to provoke a civil confrontation in Russia and, using its “fifth column,” seeks to achieve its goal. And the only goal, as I have already said, is the destruction of Russia.”

Putin describes the situation as a state of war, the West’s purpose being the destruction of Russia. Diplomacy has been unable to defuse the West’s intent to subvert Russia to slave status within the Empire of Lies. Russia has endured provocations for years in hopes that reason would prevail in the West, but to no avail. Ukraine was the final straw. Ukraine’s refusal to abide by the Minsk Agreement, eight years of shelling the Donbass Russians, the militarization of Ukraine by Washington, the prospect of Ukraine acquiring nuclear weapons, the discovered biowar labs operating in conjunction with Washington, and the rejection by the West of Russia’s security concern left no alternative to Russian military intervention.

The intervention is limited and does not intend to occupy Ukraine. [ I suspect that Russia will be forced to occupy Ukraine in order to prevent Washington agains militarizing Ukraine and reorganizing the Russophobic neo-Nazi elements. Russia is in fantasy land if she thinks any signed agreement will mean anything.]

From the Western presstitutes, a person would never know that there is a Russian side. Western peoples need to read Putin’s speech to see the Russian side of the story.

Putin’s speech shows a better comprehension of the situation than previously when Russian diplomacy treated the obvious aggression from the West as misunderstandings on the part of its “Western partners” that could be clarified via diplomatic meetings. The Kremlin now understands that this assumption was pure folly.

Putin’s speech also shows that the Kremlin’s comprehension is not complete. Putin shows himself to be still committed to globalism, which means he does not yet understand that Russian sovereignty is inconsistent with globalism. Under globalism the only sovereign country is the one that runs the globalism, and that is not Russia.

Putin also virtue signals that unlike the West Russia will respect private property and not confiscate the Russian assets of the sanctioning countries that have confiscated Russian property, including the reserves of the Russian central bank that were either incompetently or in an act of treason held in enemy countries where they could be easily stolen.

Russia’s continuing commitment to globalism and to Western financial norms, which work only for the West, are the Archilles’ heel in Russia’s response to the war of annihilation that Washington has launched against Russia. So far Washington is winning the war for the simple reason that Russia is always responding to Washington’s initiatives and never being proactive.

Here is Putin’s speech:

https://vk.com/@580896205-putins-must-read-speech-prior-to-the-meeting-on-measures-of

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