Putin tells Russians to steel themselves for tough year ahead
PUBLISHED : Friday, 02 January, 2015, 3:19am
UPDATED : Friday, 02 January, 2015, 3:19am
Washington Post in Moscow
A mural in Sevastopol, Crimea of Putin, who still commands strong support at home. Photo: Reuters
The annual New Year's address in Russia, given in the waning moments of the old year, is usually a chance for the president to list the country's accomplishments, recall the year's high points and wish everyone a happy holiday.
But as Russian President Vladimir Putin rang in 2015, his tone was decidedly more measured as he glossed over the bulk of geopolitical shifts Russia experienced or caused in the past year, and quietly warned the Russian people to brace for more hardships.
Remember that Crimea is ours, he said, and that the Olympics were a success - and thanks for sticking together through everything else. Please continue to do so.
Putin has managed to ride through a year of geopolitical ups and downs with his approval rating at about 85 per cent last month.
But the events of 2014 pose a challenge to Putin's legacy, built on his reputation as a leader who brought prosperity back to Russia after difficult years of post-Soviet transition.
In the past nine months - since the annexation of Crimea - Russia has witnessed its relations with the West deteriorate to levels of hostility not seen since before perestroika.
Its major industries have been all but locked out of the global lending markets, and the value of the rouble and the price of oil - exports of which form the bedrock of Russia's economy - have plummeted.
The events of last year not only soured Russia's diplomatic relations with the West, but also have refuelled the ambitions of a dormant opposition movement at home, members of which rallied outside the Kremlin to call for a new president on the eve of Putin's New Year's address.
And just the day before Putin's taped address aired on television stations across the country at midnight on Wednesday, Russia's finance minister forecast harder times.
"We are going to have to use our safety cushion," Anton Siluanov said in an interview on state television station Rossiya 24.
Yet dire warnings and developments have done little to inspire a backlash against Putin.
Instead, many ordinary Russians - encouraged by authorities - have adopted a heightened patriotism, girding themselves for tougher times as a way of supporting their country when many there believe the world is against them.
Putin tapped such sentiments in his New Year's speech.
"Love for the motherland is one of the most powerful, uplifting feelings," he said.
Earlier that day, as the Kremlin was offering New Year's greetings to the various leaders and governments of the world, Russia's Foreign Ministry was issuing a particularly strongly worded warning to the United States and Europe to butt out of Russia's domestic affairs.
"Our Western partners should have to deal with what is happening in their homes," said Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian Foreign Ministry's human-rights chief, listing among the United States' domestic problems the recently disclosed CIA torture abuses, the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the Ferguson protests - which Russian authorities and media have had a field day opining on - and the "murders of Russian foster children".
"If the West is offering us such standards of the rule of law, it is clearly not meant for us."
