President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia wrapped up what was for him a unprecedented and typically rambling week of upbeat commentary on the Ukraine struggle by asserting on Friday that Russia was so assured of prevailing in opposition to the Ukrainian counteroffensive that he had dominated out utilizing nuclear weapons.
Dropping what had been a strict avoidance of discussing the struggle in any element, Mr. Putin informed an viewers of Russia’s enterprise elite, gathered for the annual St. Petersburg Worldwide Financial Discussion board, that Ukraine had “no probability” in opposition to Russian forces and indicated that its Western backers would tire of the battle and cease supplying weapons, ending Kyiv’s struggle effort.
But, Mr. Putin’s assertions of success within the face of repeated setbacks appeared to rankle a small however ever louder refrain of critics. They level to the counteroffensive, drone assaults on Moscow, incursions by pro-Ukraine militias into southern Russia and cross-border shelling of Russian cities as proof that issues may very well be spiraling uncontrolled.
That might clarify why Mr. Putin took care this week to current himself as a hands-on, educated commander in chief, even asserting at one level Friday that “proper now” the Ukrainians had been attacking with two tanks right here and 5 tanks there. However his technique of proclaiming success whereas dismissing issues with key navy parts like good weapons or border safety is a contradiction, his critics say, that can’t endure endlessly.
“The Russian Military has gone utterly on the defensive, and all its achievements are measured solely by the truth that it has not but retreated very a lot,” wrote one critic, Alfred Kokh, a former Russian deputy prime minister and opposition politician, in a commentary on Fb. “All of the whereas he’s explaining the identical factor: It’s not his fault. It was the Ukrainians themselves, NATO, the People, he was simply compelled, it was not him who attacked, it was mandatory.”
Mr. Putin was pugnacious and outright nasty at instances, particularly in defaming President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. “I’ve had many Jewish buddies since childhood,” Mr. Putin mentioned. “They are saying Zelensky just isn’t a Jew. He’s a shame to the Jewish individuals.”
He then repeated his false claims about Ukraine as a nest of Nazi sympathizers. Mr. Putin has usually tried to justify his invasion of Ukraine by depicting it as an extension of the Soviet Union’s epic defeat of the Nazis in World Battle II. On Friday he indicated that it was one thing of an emotional preoccupation, noting that he had ordered up proof of Nazi ties there simply earlier than going to sleep the night time earlier than.
He then introduced ugly, black-and-white photos of struggle victims filmed throughout World Battle II, claiming that the Ukrainian nationalists sought then to create an ethnically pure nation. Mr. Putin made the hyperlink to that ancient times by once more claiming that Ukrainians nonetheless revered Stepan Bandera, a polemical World Battle II chief accused of collaborating with the Nazis to free the nation from Soviet management.
Whereas charging the Ukrainians with attempting to bait him into escalating the battle, Mr. Putin acknowledged that Russia had no have to resort to its appreciable nuclear arsenal as a result of the struggle couldn’t threaten his nation’s very existence.
“Using nuclear weapons, after all, is feasible, for Russia, it’s doable if there’s a menace to our territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty, the existence of the Russian state,” he mentioned earlier than including, “We don’t have this want.”
Mr. Putin additionally confirmed that the primary batch of Russian tactical nuclear warheads had been deployed in neighboring Belarus to function a deterrent in opposition to assaults on Russia, and that extra would arrive earlier than the tip of the 12 months.
Mr. Putin has maintained for the reason that invasion began that the West compelled his hand through the use of Ukraine as a stalking horse to threaten Russia. Critics have scoffed at that, saying he determined to invade as a result of his repeated makes an attempt to say political management over Kyiv had failed and that he couldn’t tolerate having a thriving democratic various to Russia’s autocracy proper subsequent door.
By the bluster and unsubstantiated claims of success, Mr. Putin made it clear this week that, no matter might occur within the brief time period, his biggest weapon is time.
“His personal hope is that the West will get out of Ukraine,” mentioned Tatiana Stanovaya, the top of the political evaluation agency R.Politik. “He doesn’t need to speak with the West; it’s too late and it went too far, and he doesn’t appear to be prepared.”
If Mr. Putin tried to current a sure calm with regard to the counteroffensive, on Friday he did threaten that the F-16 fighter jets promised to Ukraine would “burn” similar to a few of the trendy Western tanks Ukraine is using in its counteroffensive. He added that Russia may need to take extra aggressive measures if the warplanes had been primarily based at airfields outdoors Ukraine.
He additionally repeated that Russia is perhaps compelled to carve out a buffer zone in jap Ukraine to place Ukrainian artillery out of attain, a comment that prompted mocking commentary, given the issues which have plagued the Russian navy.
Viktor I. Alksnis, a former right-wing member of Russia’s Parliament and a retired Soviet Air Pressure colonel, wrote on Telegram that Mr. Putin appeared to magnify the quantity of territory that Russia managed in southeastern Ukraine. How can Mr. Putin ponder an exclusion zone, he mentioned, “if we had been unable to drive the enemy away even from Donetsk?”
In his speech to the assembled businesspeople — none of them from the West — Mr. Putin rattled on for greater than an hour about how Western sanctions and the retreat of many international corporations had not dimmed the Russian economic system’s prospects.
At instances the juxtaposition may very well be jarring. Within the midst of a struggle by which Russia has usually failed to produce its troops with fundamental requirements, Mr. Putin prompt that the tourism trade spend money on “glamping.”
Russia has categorized a lot of its financial information, making it nearly unimaginable to verify the official numbers. Though the St. Petersburg Worldwide Financial Discussion board was initially conceived as a method to current Russian expertise and funding alternatives to Western enterprise leaders, sanctions and the struggle meant nearly none went this 12 months.
One Russian economist wrote on Twitter that he listened in surprise to Mr. Putin’s speech in regards to the nation’s financial progress, low inflation and unemployment, lower within the variety of poor, success in digitalization and different improvements, property safety and the general wholesome funding local weather.
“I needed to stay within the nation that Putin described,” mentioned the economist, Andrei Nechaev, himself a former minister of financial improvement.
Alina Lobzina contributed reporting from London, Milana Mazaeva from New York and Oleg Matsnev from Berlin.
