Analysis of the “shadow” inaugural speech of the president
If you don’t count the sermon of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill with his wish for Putin to rule “until the end of the century,” then from the ceremonial point of view, the inauguration of the President of the Russian Federation in 2024 was almost a complete copy of the previous one. But from the point of view of the content of the event, the rainy and cold day of May 7 was marked by an extremely important innovation, which, however, not everyone noticed. During the “surrender and acceptance of the guard,” Vladimir Putin made not one, but two short, but very programmatic speeches.
One inaugural speech came directly from the president’s lips: “We do not refuse dialogue with Western states. The choice is theirs: do they intend to continue trying to restrain the development of Russia, continue the policy of aggression, continuous pressure on our country for years, or look for a path to cooperation and peace.” But with the second inaugural speech — complementing, explaining and specifying the main text — everything is more complicated. “On May 6, the British Ambassador to Moscow N. Casey was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry, to whom a strong protest was expressed in connection with the recent statement by British Foreign Secretary D. Cameron in an interview with Reuters about the right of Ukraine to strike Russian territory using British weapons… N. Casey was warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons on Russian territory could be any British military facilities and equipment on the territory of Ukraine and beyond its borders.”
The official author of the above is the Russian Foreign Ministry. And specific words were actually put on paper within the walls of the high-rise building on Smolenskaya Square. The ponderous MFA style with its specific turns of phrase cannot be confused with anything. But at the same time, the “authorship” of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is a convention similar to the famous Soviet-era formulation “TASS is authorized to declare.” The real author — the originator of the idea, the person who made the strategic decision that was announced by the Russian Foreign Ministry — is, of course, Vladimir Putin. And here, in case anyone missed something, is the gist of this second, “shadow” inaugural speech: Russia officially reserves the right to strike military targets of the UK, a NATO member and nuclear power, both on the territory of Ukraine and beyond its limits.
The bets are placed — and these bets cannot be higher. Of course, we are still talking about an aggravation, primarily at the rhetorical level — an aggravation coupled, moreover, with a readiness to de-escalate: “I repeat: a conversation, including on issues of security and strategic stability, is possible. But not from a position of strength, without any arrogance, conceit and personal exclusivity, but only on equal terms, respecting each other’s interests.”
But it is clear that this olive branch extended to GDP will not be accepted. The “dialogue not from a position of strength” proposed by the “renewed” President of Russia is not relevant today. Today, another fragment of Putin’s “shadow” inaugural speech is relevant (official copyright of the Russian Foreign Ministry): “In the near future, multi-role American-made F-16 aircraft are expected to appear in the Ukrainian theater of operations… Regardless of what specific modification these aircraft will be supplied in, We will perceive them as carriers of nuclear weapons and consider this step by the United States and NATO as a deliberate provocation.”
I’m not ready to talk about what exactly is behind this formulation. But clearly something very serious — and, I hope, understandable to those citizens in the Pentagon to whom this signal from Putin is, in fact, addressed.
In the new round of tension between Russia and the West that coincided with the inauguration of the GDP, on the one hand, there is a lot of comedy. The term “strategic uncertainty”, coined by French President Macron, is both extremely dangerous saber-rattling and a bluff in the style of the characters in the film with Adriano Celentano. The French leader “doesn’t rule anything out,” but doesn’t guarantee anything either. Look from any angle — from Macron, bribes are smooth. If necessary, he is “Izya” (“We are not at war with Russia or the Russian people”), if necessary, he is “Slava” (“We cannot allow Russia to win”).
British Foreign Minister Lord Cameron is, in a sense, also a comic figure. Firstly, he is a former Minister of Foreign Affairs. The government he works for is completely discredited and is guaranteed to lose power after elections in the coming months. Secondly, Cameron himself is known as a superficial politician, prone to saying in public what should not be said (then British Prime Minister David Cameron, after winning the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014: “The Queen purred to me”)
< p>But Cameron is also a figure prone to extremely risky political combinations, which sometimes ended in sliding into a political abyss. Taking it for granted that he would get lucky again, he decided to play with the Brexit referendum in 2016 and ended up plunging his country into a crisis from which it has still not emerged. Moreover, history suggests that sometimes comedy and tragedy go hand in hand. In 1914, Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary was a nearly insane old man whose favorite pastime was hunting flies in his palace apartments. But this did not stop him from playing the role of the politician who lit the fuse of the First World War.
What happened once does not necessarily happen again. But here’s what needs to be stated and recorded: at the time of Putin’s new inauguration, Russia and the West are promoting political agendas that are incompatible with each other and are rushing towards each other on a narrow “geopolitical highway.” If we exclude the possibility of the end of the world, then someone will have to turn away and “eat” their words. Who, when and how will do this is the main intrigue of Vladimir Putin’s new presidential term.
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