FALCON POWERS – Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a message to the West with two implications: that the Kremlin is ready for dialogue, but Russia seeks to achieve victory in Ukraine.
On Tuesday, Putin took the oath of office to begin a new six-year term, during which he was honored as an emperor.
At 71 years old, Putin, who assumed the presidency just eight years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, will surpass Joseph Stalin and become the longest-serving ruler of Russia since Empress Catherine the Great if he completes his term. Confidence was evident on Putin’s face during the highly organized inauguration ceremony, which the West and opposition figures, most of whom are either in prison or outside the country, consider a democratic cover-up for a corrupt authoritarian rule.
While the Russian elites waited in the Grand St. Andrew’s Hall, which once housed the imperial throne, Putin reviewed documents in his office before walking through the corridors of the Kremlin, greeting the guards, and pausing to contemplate a picture on the wall. After taking the oath, Putin said, “We do not refuse dialogue with Western countries,” and added that he is prepared to engage in talks on security and strategic stability, but not with the “arrogance” of the United States and its allies.
Putin, who has effectively ruled Russia for more than 24 years, pledged to achieve victory. He stated that all Russians are now “responsible before our thousand-year history and our ancestors.” The ceremony concluded with the opera music “Life for the Tsar” by Mikhail Glinka playing. In the Kremlin, an opera song resonated, proclaiming, “Glory to you, Russia! Glory to you, Russian land.” The original phrase in the opera was “Glory to our Russian Tsar.”
Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party, said, “The authority of our president is higher than ever before, higher than the American president, and even higher than the Russian Tsar. Many things depend on our president.”
- The War
The invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 caused the worst breakdown in relations between Russia and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Russia is advancing on the front lines and surpassing NATO in artillery production.
The West considers Putin a dictator, a war criminal, and a killer. Earlier in the year, U.S. President Joe Biden described him as “crazy,” and American officials say he has plunged Russia into a corrupt dictatorship.
Putin argues that the war is part of a battle for existence against the “decaying and decomposing” West, which he claims humiliated Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 by encroaching on what Russia considers its sphere of influence, including Ukraine. Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russian foreign intelligence, told Reuters that Putin’s speech was an invitation to the West to start a dialogue.
He further stated, “On the one hand, it is an invitation to the West to cooperate on an equal footing, and on the other hand, Russia has a strong belief that it is capable of achieving its development and security.”
When asked what would happen if the West did not want dialogue, Naryshkin smiled and said, “Then let them think.”
This message comes just one day after Putin ordered the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in response to threats from France, Britain, and the United States, according to Moscow.
