Putin To Update Russia’s Elite on Ukraine War in Major Speech

President Vladimir Putin will update Russia’s elite on the war in Ukraine on Tuesday, nearly one year to the day since ordering an invasion that has triggered the biggest confrontation with the West since the depths of the Cold War.

Putin will focus on what he casts as the “special military operation” in Ukraine, give his analysis of the international situation and outline his vision of Russia’s development after the West slapped on the severest sanctions in recent history.

“At such a crucial and very complicated juncture in our development, our lives, everyone is waiting for a message in the hope of hearing an assessment of what is happening, an assessment of the special military operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television.

The speech, to members of both houses of parliament and to military commanders and soldiers, is due to begin at 0900 GMT in central Moscow.

The Ukraine conflict is by far the biggest bet by a Kremlin chief since at least the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union – and a gamble Western leaders such as U.S. President Joe Biden say he must lose.

“Russian forces have suffered three major battlefield reversals since the war began but still control around one fifth of Ukraine.”

Tens of thousands of men have been killed, and Putin, 70, now says Russia is locked in an existential battle with an arrogant West which he says “wants to carve up Russia and steal its vast natural resources.”

The West and Ukraine reject that narrative, and say NATO expansion eastwards is no justification for what they say is an imperial-style land grab doomed to failure.

Reuters /Shakirat Sadiq