: Opinion: What Putin said, and what he meant #IndiaNEWS #News By Robert M Dover When Vladimir Putin took to Russian television on September 21 he wanted to send three clear headline messages. The

Opinion: What Putin said, and what he meant #IndiaNEWS #News
By Robert M Dover
When Vladimir Putin took to Russian television on September 21 he wanted to send three clear headline messages.
The first is that the threat of nuclear war is credible and serious. The second is that partial mobilisation and rapid changes to military desertion laws is a sign of intent and intractability and a stepping stone to full mobilisation. And the third is that Russian annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk are non-negotiable.
On the question of annexation, Putin suggested that his immediate war goals are now limited to these two regions. This provides an opportunity to contain the conflict and allow Putin the off-ramp that he requires for his domestic public audience and the more important audience of the policy elites for his own survival.
Importantly, there were secondary signals contained in Putin’s speech that policy makers in the west need to understand if they are to navigate the next few weeks and months safely.
Underlying Putin’s speech was Russia’s 2021 national security strategy, which contains plans ranging as far forward as 2035. Focusing on the Ukrainian conflict or Putin’s writings on Ukraine last year is a mistake: these come second to Russian grand strategy.
West Isn’t Listening
The Russian government is articulating what it wants to achieve but the west is less effective in hearing and understanding these messages. Russia’s policy machine then works through these ambitions and tests at what cost they can be achieved.
All too often western commentators dismiss Russian positioning and rhetoric as sabre rattling. This is because they are often conveyed in a way that jars with how western political classes speak.
The west needs to take these Russian positions more seriously and create barriers to stop Russia from achieving them. This should come in the form of incentives as well as penalties.
Supplying billions of dollars of weaponry to Ukraine post-invasion is an example of a belated western response. Ideally this needed to occur prior to an invasion that Russia had clearly signalled it planned.
The 2021 national security strategy placed technological change, economic wealth and national security as tied objectives. It referenced concerns about US military technology appearing in Russia’s near-abroad (one pretext to the Ukrainian invasion) and Russian culture being diluted by western cultural imports.
All of these strategic inputs had been triggered before the invasion of Ukraine and have been amplified since. Putin’s speech has to be read within this context.
The fundamental disjuncture between the positions of Russia and the west has centred on one philosophical and one practical element.