'Scum and traitors': Under pressure over Ukraine, Putin turns his ire on Russians
By: Alexander Smith (NBC News)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Link copied March 17, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC By Alexander Smith
Anyone looking for signs that embattled and isolated Russia might soften its position would not have found much hope in the increasingly belligerent words of President Vladimir Putin.
With his invasion of Ukraine floundering and his economy teetering, Putin doubled down Wednesday — turning his baleful glare on Russians who are against the invasion or who sympathize with the West.
"The Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors, and will simply spit them out like an insect in their mouth onto the pavement," he said, shoulders hunched and staring down the barrel of the camera.
It was the latest speech that has surprised and alarmed many who study Putin. He has adopted what they say is an emotional, ranting tone since he invaded Ukraine three weeks ago, a departure from the calculating persona of this former KGB officer.
"He's clearly angry, emotional and feels the need to speak in this very aggressive tone," said John Lough, an associate fellow at London's Chatham House think tank.
Lough thinks the speech was clearly aimed at Russia's elites, some of whom he believes are privately dismayed about the failure of the war and the economic backlash it has inflicted at home.
According to Lough, Putin was saying to the elites: "Don't think about having second thoughts. We're all in this together and if I go down, you go down."
Russia has embarked on a crackdown on dissent that outstrips even the norm for Putin's regime. Here, people are arrested at a protest at the Kremlin on Sunday.Getty Images
Putin touched on now-common themes, comparing the West to Nazi Germany and alleging, without evidence, that Ukraine has been committing genocide against ethnic Russians. But he adopted even more hard-line rhetoric when turning his attention to Russians themselves, whom he has subjected to a sweeping crackdown on anti-war dissent in recent weeks.
Almost 15,000 protesters have been arrested in Russia since the war began, according to OVD-Info, a human rights group based in Moscow that tracks police detentions.
Unknown thousands more have fled the country, driven away by deepening state repression of protest, independent journalism and social media, as well as a spiraling economy hit by international sanctions and mass boycotts.
The Kremlin explained Thursday that it was these people who were showing themselves to be "traitors."
"They vanish from our lives," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Reuters. "Some people are leaving their posts, some are leaving their active work life, some leave the country and move to other countries. That is how this cleansing happens."
"In such difficult times," he added, "many people show their true colors."
Putin's tone contrasted with the Russian and the Ukrainian negotiating teams, which signaled tentative progress in peace talks. Some experts saw his speech as a chilling sign.
"Putin in an Orwellian way has divided the citizens of Russia into clean and unclean," Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst, said on Twitter.
Constanze Stelzenmuller, a senior fellow at the Washington think tank Brookings Institution, compared Putin's speech to Adolf Hitler's fictional tirade from the bunker in the 2004 film "Downfall," whose subtitles have generated countless memes.
"Strrronngg 'Der Untergang' vibes here," she tweeted, using the film's German title.
Biden accuses Putin of war crimes as more aid heads to Ukraine
March 17, 202202:22
Putin reserved special ire for Russian oligarchs, many of whom are Kremlin-linked billionaires who made their fortunes amid the carve-up of the former Soviet Union and now spend much of it on yachts and other luxuries in the West. Some of them have recently broken cover and distanced themselves from Putin's war.
Without naming anyone specifically, Putin referred to "national traitors" who "have villas in Miami or the French Riviera, who cannot make do without foie gras, oysters or gender freedom, as they call it" — referencing his apparent disdain for liberal values.
He criticized their "servile mentality" of being too Western "in their minds, and not here with our people and with Russia."
Putin also called for "a natural and necessary self-detoxification of society," which would "strengthen our country, our solidarity and cohesion."
Much of the rest of Putin's speech detailed the drastic economic countermeasures his government is introducing to combat sanctions and boycotts by Western governments and companies.
"Indeed, it is difficult for us at the moment," he acknowledged.
Lough, who was the first NATO official posted to Moscow in the 1990s, says his contacts there are privately conveying "surprise, shock and disbelief that Russia" is engaged in the war.
There is now an "acceptance that this is going to usher in a period of extreme isolation of Russia, as well as impoverishment and a return, frankly, to many of the features of the Soviet Union," he said.
Alexander Smith
Alexander Smith is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital based in London.
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Who and what is Putin talking about.
1. Oligarchs
2. All Russians
3. Is he losing it because the war is turning against the Russians
4. Is he losing it because the world is crushing Russia with sanctions
5. All of the above.
Again no one but Putin knows what he'll do. I stopped trying to guess what he'd do when he went full invasion. There was no upside for him and now the downside is exponentially worse.
He's between a rock and a hard place. There are thousands of Russians leaving the country, some to Turkey others to Finland and beyond. There are thousands more stuck in SE Asia with money or any means to get it since all accounts and banks withdrawals have been frozen.
I am still amazed he went ahead with the invasion. The only thing I can think is that he started believing his own bullshit. He must have truly thought that the Ukrainians would not resist or would actually welcome Russian soldiers. He must have truly thought that the West would sit idly by and do nothing. He must have truly thought that the Russian military was as good as it seemed on paper (behold the pitfall of not wanting to hear bad news or the truth).
I have been saying since Georgia that the Russian military is a paper tiger. All they have is nukes, and the disaster in Ukraine is putting that on full display.
he's the russian version of trumpsterism ...
His energy to virulently denounce his critics and opposition does indeed echo He Who Shall Remain A Moron.
Gotta wonder when someone in his inner circle is going to decide things are getting out of hand and maybe something needs to happen. Permanent like.
Hopefully soon. Every day they wait more people die.
any nefarious political activity in russia would need the support of the military at their ICBM missile bases.
And that is what is so frustrating about all of this. The Russians could be easily handled. I admit I greatly overestimated their military power, I am sure they would be better fighting within Russian borders, but looking at it now NATO would completely fuck them up. It wouldn't even be close, I could honestly see NATO forces taking Moscow within a month.
But the fucking nukes. That is the only stopping NATO from smashing the Russians into the ground. Fucking nukes.
Scum and traitors
trumpturd and putin and all their supporters and enablers.
Screws! Slowly they twist. Turn by by turn. Inch by inch!
I agree and those screws are getting very tight about now and are going to continue to get worse.
Putin's survival instinct is kicking in about now.
he's got an escape plan, if he lives that long...
To Mar-a-Lago?
czar-a-lardo
"Putin referred to "national traitors" who "have villas in Miami or the French Riviera, who cannot make do without foie gras, oysters or gender freedom, as they call it" — referencing his apparent disdain for liberal values.
He criticized their "servile mentality" of being too Western "in their minds, and not here with our people and with Russia."
Putin also called for "a natural and necessary self-detoxification of society,"
"Putin in an Orwellian way has divided the citizens of Russia into clean and unclean,"
"They vanish from our lives," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Reuters. "Some people are leaving their posts, some are leaving their active work life, some leave the country and move to other countries. That is how this cleansing happens."
It's the age old confrontation between conservative and liberal ideologies. And Putin is appealing to his white nationalist conservative base, praising them while vilifying anyone who doesn't bend to their will and accept their conservative values. And he is now signaling that there will be a cleansing, a purge of anyone disloyal to Putin from the country and, in likely tens of thousands of dissenters cases, from the planet itself. It's not only sad for all those who will suffer at the hands of such a madman, but also sad that there are those even here in the US who view such a vile sack of shit like Putin favorably and see him as a white nationalist strongman hero fighting for conservative values as Trump often pictured him. They clearly share Putin's "apparent disdain for liberal values", perhaps that's why some of them chose to share Putin's slimy lies and propaganda.
That part of this speech made me crack up. Seems that macho man Putin is afraid of foie gras, oysters and gender freedom. Gender freedom!!!!! OMG the world is falling apart if we have gender freedom.
From the reports/articles I've read, it seems that Putin has replaced his top general, actually, he's been arrested.
The purge starts.
This is a familiar pattern. In the closing weeks of WW2, Hitler purged his military officer corps, blamed the German people, ordered what was left untouched in Germany to be destroyed, increased the execution of 'disloyal' Germans by 10-fold and claimed that Germany failed the test given to it by God.
Appears very clearly to me that Putin is NOT savvy, brilliant or smart as so many disloyal Americans quickly clamored during the first days of his unprovoked, illegal, unjust and immoral invasion.
Navalny for president of The Russian Federation. The Russian people are not our enemy.
I do think Putin is smart, but I think he started believing his own garbage. He purged everyone around him who was willing to tell him the truth and was left with only people who would tell him what he wanted to hear. He created a propaganda bubble for himself and really started to believe it. I honestly think he convinced himself that the Ukrainians would not resist and that this would be a sweeping Russian victory.
Of course as soon as you step outside of the propaganda bubble alarms were blaring that this invasion was not a good idea. Sure the Ukrainians are performing much better than anyone expected and the Russians significantly worse, but everyone knew the Russians were not exactly popular in Eastern Europe and that the Ukrainians did not want to be closer with Moscow. It was obvious that any puppet government the Russians set up would be overthrown immediately and that the Russians were getting themselves into an indefinite occupation. It was obvious that the Russian military was not prepared for such an outcome (180,000 troops for a country as big as Texas and with 44 million people?!) I honestly do not know what in the fuck the Kremlin was thinking, they made the worst mistakes we did in Iraq but are much less able to deal with them.
conwebwatch.tripod.com /blog/index.blog
Not Aging Well: WND's Lively Touted Putin As Champion of 'True Human Rights'
==========================================================
And you know what that means: Lively is about to tout Putin as a champion of "true human rights" -- defined as hating LGBT people as much as he does:
Lively then gushed over Putin's rationality on Ukraine:
Lively concluded with a view of Russia that was pretty much in fantasyland even before the invasion:
If Putin had "genuine massive popular support," why did he poison his biggest rival, Alexei Navalny, then throw him in prison on trumped-up charges? And why were last year's elections rigged ?
Nope, Lively's Putin-love wasn't aging well when he wrote it, and now it's a total dumpster fire. Yet at the start of the invasion, Lively was still defending Putin. He ranted in his Feb. 24 column :
Lively continued giving Putin a pass in his March 1 column , while also manufacturing a conspiracy theory:
For his March 18 column , Lively folded China into his conspiracy theory:
Or, you know, Putin simply could have chosen not to invade Ukraine, which would avoided the position of having to seek help from China. But Lively doesn't seem to have considered that possibility.
This is the kind of far right insanity we are dealing with.
What an asswipe, (Lively)
The purge spreads.
Russian spy chief arrested, officials split over Ukraine invasion
He is looking like a madman that would destroy his own country to get what he wants.
I'm sure that you have proof of this BS statement. So the progressive is as dangerous as Putin, it would seem that the only group more dangerous than the progressives and Putin is the right-wing POS that seems to be supporting Russia and Putin.
Bosnia had been annexed by Austria Hungry and Ferdinand and his wife was in Saravejo inspecting the troops there and were assassinated by a Bosnian Serb.
Currently, Russia is meddling in the Balkans and Serbia is an ally of Russia and Bosnia is the center of this once again.
History 101.
Are you fucking high? So your position is that we should allow autocrats to undermine democracy around the globe? That we should do absolutely nothing to stop the erosion of democracy? Of course we were going to provide material support to the Ukrainians who are resisting an unprovoked invasion by a tyrant and an enemy of the US. In what fucking universe would you expect us to do nothing?
The only one to blame for this war is Putin, the only one to blame for the casualties and possible escalation is Putin.
What a bunch of horseshit. The US is not getting involved in the war beyond supplying material support and intel to the Ukrainians. Period. We will not be doing any more than we are, so any escalation is on Putin, end of story. If he decides to use nukes then the blame rests 100% on him because we will not be firing first.
The need to shit on Biden no matter what is truly astounding.
I'm sure that you have proof of this BS statement.
Boll Weevils In The Cotton? Damn Joe Biden!
a demonstration of projection. top 10 in the most ignorant comments that I've ever read on NT.