Because Russia is celebrating "Defender of the Fatherland Day" on Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin has a wreath placed on a stand at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by the Kremlin Wall.

He is followed by the Secretary of Defense, soldiers with carnations, a military band, marching music.

Putin's speech on the holiday, recorded in an office in front of national flags and dark-brown wooden walls, becomes an appeal to rally.

“The basis of the war history of our thousand-year-old country, its glory and victories,” says Putin, “has always been patriotism and unity of the people, feats of his sons and daughters devoted to the fatherland.” He recalls the victories over Napoleon and Hitler, “the unstoppable Sturm auf Berlin”, then draws a line to “threats from current challenges” such as the “military activity of the NATO bloc”.

Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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According to Putin's earlier statements, the latter is using Ukraine as a tool against Russia;

and many listening to Wednesday's holiday address will think of the Ukrainian "neo-Nazis" who, according to Putin and his apparatus, are Russians in Ukraine and especially in threaten the "people's republics" in the east of the country, which Putin recognized as states on Monday.

Just on Wednesday, the FSB secret service reported that a Ukrainian nationalist who had planned terrorist attacks had been arrested in the annexed Crimea;

At the same time, state television is again reporting, in words that seem to have come from the early days of the conflict with Kiev eight years ago, about Ukrainian revenants of the “fascists”.

In contrast, Putin conveys a message of protection and defiance.

Russia's armed forces, he says, have shown in Syria "that they are capable of solving the most difficult tasks."

They have weapons that no one else in the world has, will continue to develop supersonic weapons and those "based on new physical principles".

And three times in just over five minutes Putin conjures up Russia's "army and fleet".

Maybe just because the day of honor was called “Day of the Soviet Army and Navy Fleet” until 1991.

But Putin appreciates the Alexandr III.

attributed saying, "Russia has only two allies, army and navy".

The quote can be found on the base of a four-meter-tall bronze statue of the 1881 crowned tsar with a saber, which was unveiled in the presence of Putin in 2017 in Yalta, Crimea.

The slogan, used on many occasions in Putin's Russia, stands for proud, defensive loneliness and the willingness to make sacrifices for one's own just cause, and also for distancing oneself from a decadent, effeminate West.

The invocation of the army and navy also fits into the current situation, in which Putin, who has often had to deal with criticism in his more than two decades in power and sanctions for almost eight years, is encountering international rejection like never before.

The reason is his dealings with Ukraine;

to march on their borders and to break with the Minsk agreements by recognizing the "people's republics", the authorization by the Federation Council came on Tuesday evening to use soldiers for the "people's republics", and Putin's clarification that the entities were in the areas claimed by them boundaries recognized.

These correspond to the eastern Ukrainian administrative areas of Donetsk and Luhansk and are largely controlled by Kiev.