It was Vladimir Putin's longest speech since the February 24 morning statement in which Russia's president announced his "special military operation" in Ukraine.

The most important result of the approximately 37-minute appearance at the beginning of a session that was supposed to clarify "social and economic" issues on Wednesday afternoon was an escalation of the campaign against internal Russian critics.

Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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Putin used the words "fifth column" and "national traitor" against them, as he did in his speech on the annexation of Crimea eight years ago.

At that time, the expression "national traitor" had not been accepted for members of the opposition;

possibly because it comes from Hitler's Mein Kampf.

In the current tension, however, Putin's words seem like orders to his apparatus;

Criminal proceedings are piling up, dissidents' apartment doors are smeared, and the power party United Russia is demanding first steps against "national treason".

Initially, Putin tried to remind his officials, who were connected via video link, and the state television audience with various justifications for the “special military operation”.

He again claimed that a "real genocide" had taken place in Donbass in the past eight years.

They "couldn't tolerate it any longer".

Putin blames others

However, the Russian newspaper Kommersant has just reported "official" information from the "people's republics" in the Donbass, which do not substantiate Putin's thesis: the number of civilian casualties there in recent years has been lower than at any time since the beginning of the Russian conflict land grab in eastern Ukraine, which started in 2014. The Donetsk entity reported nine civilians killed in 2019 and five in 2020, according to Kommersant, while the Luhansk entity reported two civilians killed in 2020 and one in 2021. Putin claimed that Kyiv was preparing "ethnic cleansing in Donbass" also confirmed two other motives: The "pro-Nazi regime in Kyiv" had sought its "own nuclear weapon" and had secretly developed "biological weapons" with the support of the US Department of Defense.

In the 1990s, Ukraine surrendered the remaining Soviet nuclear weapons on its territory to Russia in return for guarantees of sovereignty;

the cooperation of various Ukrainian laboratories with America was official and, according to Kyiv and Washington, of a purely civilian nature. "We were simply forced to start the special military operation," said Putin.

The "tactics" devised by the Defense Ministry and the General Staff "have fully paid off," Putin said, praising the "courage and heroism" of Russian soldiers who would do "anything" to avoid civilian casualties.

"The operation is developing successfully, in strict accordance with the previously confirmed plans." So far, Russia's Defense Ministry has only once, on March 2, informed about its own casualty numbers and then gave the number 498.

Over the past few days, cautious optimism has been expressed in Kyiv about the negotiations with Moscow.

But Putin now spoke of a "final solution" to eliminate threats to the "People's Republics" and to Russia.

One is ready to talk about "the fundamental questions for Russia about a neutral status of Ukraine, about demilitarization and denazification" in negotiations.

That “people are dying, hundreds of thousands and millions have become refugees, that a real humanitarian catastrophe is happening in cities inhabited by neo-Nazis and armed criminals released from prison,” Putin blamed exclusively on the “Kiev regime” and the West.

In the Russian account, their own soldiers "liberators" and casualties among the civilian population can only be traced back to Ukrainian "Nazis".