Vladimir Putin has claimed the ongoing developments in Ukraine are “a matter of life and death” for Russia.
Speaking to a journalist with the Russian state media, Pavel Zarubin, the Russian president said his interview with right-wing US commentator Tucker Carlson was about hammering home this particular message.
During their two-hour interview earlier this month, Putin made a number of bewildering claims and went on an obscure historical rant for half an hour.
But, he told Zarubin he was trying to convey how significant “everything that happens in the Ukrainian direction” is to Russia as a whole.
According to the Russian state news agency TASS, Putin said: “For them [the West] this is about improving their tactical position, but for us this is about our destiny, a matter of life and death.
“I wanted people that will listen to this [interview with Carlson] to realise that. It’s not up to me to judge whether it hit the mark or not.”
Certainly, many people have died since Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – including Ukrainian civilians.
Between then and November last year, at least 10,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed, according to the UN monitoring mission in the beleaguered country.
Most of the war has actually unfolded on Ukrainian land – meaning more civilians there have come face-to-face with the war – while Kyiv has launched far fewer attacks on Moscow.
The head of the monitoring mission in Ukraine, Danielle Bell, said at the time: “Nearly half of civilians casualties in the last three months have occurred far away from the frontlines. As a result, no place in Ukraine is completely safe.”
The wives of Russian soldiers have called for the troops to come home, too, and have staged protests demanding their return.
Putin’s claim that all of Russia believes the war is a way to fulfil their “destiny” overlooks the amount of backlash the Kremlin faced in September 2022, when 300,000 reservists were called up to fight in the war.
There was more resistance to the Kremlin over the weekend too, when Russian police tried to clamp down on those mourning Putin critic and anti-war campaigner Alexei Navalny.
Putin has not actually mentioned the former leader of the opposition, who died while in prison on Friday, even though Navalny was his most vocal opponent.
It’s telling that anti-war candidate Boris Nadezhdin, who tried to run in the upcoming Russian presidential election, also started to poll in the double-digits earlier this year before the Kremlin barred him from running.
While Putin is a shoo-in to win yet another term in the Kremlin, the rising support for Nadezhdin suggests not everyone is as happy with the war in Ukraine, as the Russian president claims.
And Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya vowed on Monday to pick up where her husband left off, and carry on the fight for freedom.
She also claimed he was poisoned by the nerve agent Novichok, and said: “We know exactly why Putin killed Alexei three days ago. We will tell you about it soon.”