Inside the Kremlin: Putin living in an alternate reality with Russia in Ukraine ‘for the long haul’
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has created an alternative reality to convince the population that the country is under siege from its enemies, according to a leading security expert.
Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, the international affairs think tank, said Putin’s speech at the Victory Day parade in Moscow was “the same old story”.
“We’ve heard the same old story from Putin. We’ve heard that yes, Russia is surrounded by enemies, it’s under siege, it’s under attack and everything that Russia is doing is actually a defensive response to attacks from the west and from Ukraine itself,” Giles told GB News.
“It’s just a symptom of this alternative reality that has been driven by Russian propaganda for so long now that it’s very hard to challenge within Russia itself.”
“It’s only outside the country that that discordant note between what Putin is saying and what the rest of the world knows to be true is clear.”
He said changes to the make-up of this year’s parade, which saw some older equipment on display, was not necessarily related to Russian losses in Ukraine.
“We shouldn’t necessarily dig too deep and read too much into that,” he said. “It could simply be a straightforward sequence of events that is not related to what’s happening in Ukraine.
“It’s far more what Putin is saying and how he’s framing this event that is of interest.”
Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House
“And of course, it’s part of that ongoing narrative of Russia against the world, of Russia being on the defensive and having to prosecute this war of reconquest in Europe because it’s forced to do so.”
He said Putin’s failure to declare victory in Ukraine during the parade indicates that Russian military aggression will continue in the long-term.
Giles said: ‘If Putin declared that some of the objectives of Russia in Ukraine had been met, then it would have meant that they could have a ceasefire and a scaling down of military operations, but that hasn’t happened.
“Russia does seem to be in this for the long haul but at the same time, Putin did not announce many of the steps that Russia would actually need to take to conduct this war for much longer, like a military call up in order to replace the manpower that it’s losing in Ukraine and keep those frontline units.
“There’s a mixture of both this apparent determination to continue with the conflict, but also still not to admit that Russia is actually waging war against its neighbour.”
Giles said that even though Putin did not announce a general mobilisation of troops to boost its presence in Ukraine it did not mean that was not happening.
“You can see Russia scraping the barrel for manpower in a lot of different regions. This forced mobilisation of people in the occupied regions of Ukraine to fight on the Russian side, which in itself is just one of the many war crimes that Russia is currently conducting.
“Recruiting in Syria, recruiting private military companies for mercenaries – all in an attempt to keep this war effort going without declaring the full scale mobilisation of Russia that would have been necessary to actually completely overwhelm Ukraine.
“This will drag on and it remains the case that the biggest challenge for the West is to support Ukraine as that front line of defence of Europe.”
“That’s why it’s so urgent to continue the military help to Ukraine but also the humanitarian and economic aid that’s necessary to keep Ukraine functioning as a state while it’s under this devastating attack across the whole of the country by Russian long range strikes,” Giles concluded.