On Friday night, as he continued to field questions at a press conference after his spokesman tried to end it, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin presented a hard-hitting thesis about the nature of truth.
“No one can be trusted,” he told a reporter for Russian state media. “You can only trust me.”
It was the fitting end to a week in which Putin was particularly busy constructing his version of reality at a time when a Russian victory in Ukraine seems as far away as ever. In a marathon of public appearances that began Monday with a televised tour of the damaged bridge from Russia to Crimea, Putin spoke about nuclear doctrine, prisoner swaps with the United States, alleged Polish revanchism and even “very harsh” practices. of European zoos.
On Wednesday, the Kremlin released nearly three hours of footage of Putin’s meeting with his “human rights council.” On Thursday, he posted a video showing Putin pledging to continue his attacks on Ukraine as he looks so jovial, glass of champagne in hand, that some observers thought he was drunk.
And at a press conference on the sidelines of a regional summit in Kyrgyzstan on Friday, the president dismissed the notion that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could face headwinds.
“The special military operation is going on, everything is stable for us there,” Putin said, using the Kremlin’s term for his war in Ukraine. “There are no problems or problems there today.”
Most of what Putin said repeated his past positions, and much of what he said was false. On Ukraine, he said that “in the end, we will have to come to an agreement” to stop the war, though he gave no indication that he was prepared to respect Ukrainian sovereignty. And referring to Thursday’s release of American basketball star Brittney Griner in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, Putin said Russia “will not say no to doing more of this work in the future.”
His series of appearances, however, was also a message in itself: that of a president who, despite a sanctions-battered economy and Russia’s massive military losses, is trying to present himself as healthy, alert and still in charge. .
The burst of activity has been a departure from November, when it held only one prolonged public event from November 10 to 20, an absence from the spotlight for which the Kremlin did not explain.
“He is just showing, mainly to Russia’s ruling circles, that he is still in control of the situation,” said Grigorii Golosov, a professor of political science at the European University in St. Petersburg. “When Putin talks so much, what he says is not that important.”
In fact, some of Putin’s comments this week served mainly to reveal his fixation on his own government’s propaganda. In his video conference on Wednesday with a handpicked human rights panel, he responded to a question about the treatment of Russians in Europe by saying that “nationalist elements in Poland” were “dreaming” of taking over parts of western Ukraine, repeating a unsubstantiated claim that one of its top intelligence officials had made the previous week.
Then he went on a tangent about zoos: “In some Western countries, animals in the zoo are killed in front of children, butchered, etc. This does not correspond to our culture at all, the culture of the peoples of the Russian Federation”.
It was a reference, pro-Kremlin media reported, to the Copenhagen Zoo’s 2014 decision to kill a giraffe due to the risk of inbreeding. And it was an example of how Putin is trying to use every argument he can to bolster anti-Western sentiment among the Russian public.
But in Putin’s autocracy, it is his own words that offer the best guide to Russian policy. In that regard, he offered no hint of doubt this week, repeating the comparison he made in June of his own conquests with those of Peter the Great, the pivotal 18th-century czar.
“The fact that there are new territories is an important result for Russia, it is serious,” Putin said, beaming with satisfaction, in his video conference on Wednesday with his human rights council, despite increasingly tenuous control by his military in those regions. .
“Peter the Great was already fighting for access to the Azov Sea,” Putin added, referring to Ukraine’s southeastern coast now controlled by Russian troops.
The next day, Putin awarded Russia’s Gold Star to military officers in the Kremlin. In addition to posting footage of his speech, Putin’s office posted a four-minute clip of the president having a military conversation with the honorees, each holding a glass of champagne.
“The attack planes are fighting very well, as are the ‘sushki,’” Putin said, referring to the Sukhoi military fighter jets with a diminutive name. “Great, just excellent.”
He went on to justify Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure with “But who started it?” rhetorical question, claiming Ukraine was to blame because it had attacked the Kerch Strait Bridge to Crimea, which Russia uses to supply its frontline troops.
On social media, some expressed surprise that the Kremlin released the images, given that Putin, whose sobriety and self-control are central to his carefully crafted image in Russia, appeared to have been drunk as he swayed from side to side. But Golosov said that broadcasting Putin looking happy and relaxed as he talks about his country’s deadly war was effective for Kremlin advisers.
“Putin needs to show the public that everything is fine,” Golosov said, “that he can talk about what’s going on with fun.”
