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Putin’s Address to the Federal Assembly
Russian president Vladimir Putin delivered his annual address to the Federal Assembly. The ceremony took place in Gostiny Dvor, Moscow. The previous one, in February 2023, was also held at this fashionable exhibition center a few hundred meters from the Kremlin.
Putin’s new address to the Federal Assembly, as has become a tradition, was mainly devoted to the domestic socio-economic agenda. The president’s new promises (the address became the 19th in his career) were once again intended to give millions of citizens hope for a “better future.” To this end, the date of the speech was moved as close as possible to the presidential elections in Russia, which are scheduled for March 15–17. According to presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, the address is Putin’s election program.
As usual, the address to the Federal Assembly contained anti-Western rhetoric, as no similar statement in recent years has been without it. Putin repeated his theses about the “existential conflict” with the West, which is necessary to create an enemy image among the elites and in Russian society.
“The so-called West, with its colonial practices and penchant for inciting ethnic conflicts around the world, not only seeks to impede our progress but also envisions a Russia that is a dependent, declining, and dying space where they can do as they…