“Meaningless speech”: Expert explained what Putin’s New Year’s speech concealed (video)

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s speech on the eve of 2024 is the result of compromise between various parties in the Kremlin. Political strategist Mikhail Sheitelman stated this in an interview with Channel 24.

He noted that Putin spoke for just over three minutes. Last year he spoke for about 9 minutes as if he were explaining something to the Russians. But his latest New Year’s Eve performance is meaningless.

“This was a completely meaningless speech that any toastmaster could make,” the political strategist said.

Sheitelman also suggested that the text of the speech was a compromise between different forces in the Kremlin. Therefore, while one force advocates that Putin should not talk about the war, the other force wants the Russian President to constantly talk about it.

The speech was also recorded by former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. According to Sheitelman, he was only talking about the war in Ukraine and Moscow’s geopolitical interests.

“This sounded particularly funny coming out of Medvedev’s mouth. But the truth is that someone in the administration noticed that this was missing from Putin’s speech and decided to release Medvedev,” the expert said.

Let us recall that ISW analyzed Putin’s statements about the “real enemies” of the Russian Federation. So, on the first day of the new year, Putin visited the Russian military in one of Moscow’s hospitals, where he said that the West was the enemy and that Russia was waging an “existential war” against the West in Ukraine. Putin implied that the goal of the war in Ukraine was Russia’s victory over the West. As American analysts note, Putin is probably consciously presenting Ukraine as a pawn in this war, masking his goal of gaining complete control in this war.