Why did Putin call the US and the West Satan and neo-colonial exploiters?

Referendums were held from September 24th to 27th on proposals to join the Russian Federation in the Donbas region’s People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and in the Russian-majority Zaporozhye and Kherson regions of Ukraine, which Russian forces have liberated. The results of these referendums showed that the majority voted in favour of accession to Russia. After that, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement on the accession of the two People’s Republics and the territories, which have been liberated from the neo-Nazis, into the Russian Federation.

On Friday, October 1st 2022, Putin delivered a key speech at the St George’s Hall of the Kremlin Palace, addressing the people of Russia and those of the newly acceded territories. In his speech, Putin confidently expressed that Russia would thwart all western imperialistic ambitions, especially to weaken and balkanise the Russian state; he also lambasted the US and its lackeys. He compared them with Satan and called them “neo-colonists”.

On the people’s right to self-determination

Putin criticised the West’s vehement opposition to the people’s right to self-determination. He lambasted Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, an unapologetic defender of the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and their crimes against humanity.

“It is undoubtedly their right, an inherent right sealed in Article 1 of the UN Charter, which directly states the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” – Putin said.

He threatened that the West can’t turn the wheels of history back and undo the people’s verdict regarding their right to self-determination. He asserted that the West and Ukraine must note that these people are now Russian citizens.

He said, “I want the Kiev authorities and their true handlers in the West to hear me now, and I want everyone to remember this: the people living in Lugansk and Donetsk, in Kherson and Zaporozhye have become our citizens, forever.”

Putin asserted that Russia would throw all its weight behind these people and protect them. “We will defend our land with all the forces and resources we have, and we will do everything we can to ensure the safety of our people. This is the great liberating mission of our nation.”

He even asked the Kiev regime to undertake a peace process and halt all hostilities. However, Putin warned that Russia would be ready to discuss everything but won’t change the status of these newly acceded parts.

Putin said, “We call on the Kiev regime to immediately cease fire and all hostilities; to end the war it unleashed back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table. We are ready for this, as we have said more than once. But the choice of the people in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson will not be discussed. The decision has been made, and Russia will not betray it. Kiev’s current authorities should respect this free expression of the people’s will; there is no other way. This is the only way to peace.”

On western imperialistic ambitions and world order

Putin criticised the imperialistic hegemonistic attitude of the US and its allies. He blamed them for their sheer colonial mindset and their agenda to balkanise and weaken Russia. Putin cited historical facts, from the Korean war to the Vietnam war and beyond, to show how the US and its allies have always resorted to wars and violence to impose their rule on the world with brute force.

Putin said: “The West is ready to cross every line to preserve the neo-colonial system which allows it to live off the world, to plunder it thanks to the domination of the dollar and technology, to collect an actual tribute from humanity, to extract its primary source of unearned prosperity, the rent paid to the hegemon. The preservation of this annuity is their main, real and absolutely self-serving motivation. This is why total de-sovereignisation is in their interest. This explains their aggression towards independent states, traditional values and authentic cultures, their attempts to undermine international and integration processes, new global currencies and technological development centres they cannot control. It is critically important for them to force all countries to surrender their sovereignty to the United States.”

To explain how the neo-colonial aggression of the US and its allies takes place, Putin said, “In certain countries, the ruling elites voluntarily agree to do this, voluntarily agree to become vassals; others are bribed or intimidated. And if this does not work, they destroy entire states, leaving behind humanitarian disasters, devastation, ruins, millions of wrecked and mangled human lives, terrorist enclaves, social disaster zones, protectorates, colonies and semi-colonies. They don’t care. All they care about is their own benefit.”

He linked the US and its western allies’ neo-colonial ambitions with their ongoing tirade against Russia, in which they have been using Ukraine as a pawn. “I want to underscore again that their insatiability and determination to preserve their unfettered dominance are the real causes of the hybrid war that the collective West is waging against Russia. They do not want us to be free; they want us to be a colony. They do not want equal cooperation; they want to loot. They do not want to see us a free society, but a mass of soulless slaves.”

Putin mocked the western imperialistic notion of “rules-based” world order. He said, “And all we hear is, the West is insisting on a rules-based order. Where did that come from anyway? Who has ever seen these rules? Who agreed or approved them? Listen, this is just a lot of nonsense, utter deceit, double standards, or even triple standards! They must think we’re stupid.”

Accusing the western powers of violating sovereignty and independence of nations, he said, “It was the so-called West that trampled on the principle of the inviolability of borders, and now it is deciding, at its own discretion, who has the right to self-determination and who does not, who is unworthy of it. It is unclear what their decisions are based on or who gave them the right to decide in the first place. They just assumed it.”

He also accused the western elites of practising totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid. Putin said, “Western elites not only deny national sovereignty and international law. Their hegemony has pronounced features of totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid. They brazenly divide the world into their vassals – the so-called civilised countries – and all the rest, who, according to the designs of today’s Western racists, should be added to the list of barbarians and savages…There is nothing new in this: deep down, the Western elites have remained the same colonisers. They discriminate and divide peoples into the top tier and the rest.”

The Soviet Union’s collapse to the Alexander Dugin

From discussing the topic of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he considered the biggest “geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”, to criticising the recent assassination attempt targeting Russian geopolitical philosopher Alexander Dugin, in which his daughter was assassinated, Putin spoke about several topics connecting Russia’s present condition and the US’s impunity.

Putin criticised his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, from whom he usurped power in 2000, for his betrayal that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin, who then headed the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, along with the heads of the Ukrainian and Belarussian Soviet republics, undermined the verdict of the referendum held on the Soviet Union, in which the majority voted for retaining the Union.

They signed a treaty in private in December 1991 to dissolve the Soviet Union, which was both unethical and unconstitutional. Even the former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, who recently died, criticised the move of the three leaders. However, as he had earlier helped Yeltsin ban the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he neither had a political apparatus nor state machinery to stop Yeltsin’s juggernaut.

Without naming Yeltsin, Putin said, “In 1991 in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, representatives of the party elite of that time made a decision to terminate the Soviet Union, without asking ordinary citizens what they wanted, and people suddenly found themselves cut off from their homeland. This tore apart and dismembered our national community and triggered a national catastrophe.”

He also took pot-shots at others, including Gorbachev, saying, “…the last leaders of the Soviet Union, contrary to the direct expression of the will of the majority of people in the referendum of 1991, destroyed our great country, and simply made the people in the former republics face this as an accomplished fact.”

Putin blamed the current fiasco on the collapse of the Soviet Union; however, he also clarified that his government has no intention to re-establish the Soviet Union. “There is no Soviet Union anymore; we cannot return to the past. Actually, Russia no longer needs it today; this isn’t our ambition”, Putin said.

On the recent assassination attempt on Dugin, Putin said, “They see our thought and our philosophy as a direct threat. That is why they target our philosophers for assassination. Our culture and art present a danger to them, so they are trying to ban them.”

On imperialist loot and plunder

While lambasting the western imperialistic designs, Putin criticised the US-led forces for their colonial exploitations and praised the role of the Soviet Union in hastening the anti-colonial struggles around the world by becoming a major support base of such movements.

He said, “It is worth reminding the West that it began its colonial policy back in the Middle Ages, followed by the worldwide slave trade, the genocide of Indian tribes in America, the plunder of India and Africa, the wars of England and France against China, as a result of which it was forced to open its ports to the opium trade. What they did was get entire nations hooked on drugs and purposefully exterminated entire ethnic groups for the sake of grabbing land and resources, hunting people like animals. This is contrary to human nature, truth, freedom and justice.”

Putin hailed the Soviet support to the anti-colonial struggles in the 20th century, saying, “While we – we are proud that in the 20th century our country led the anti-colonial movement, which opened up opportunities for many peoples around the world to make progress, reduce poverty and inequality, and defeat hunger and disease.

Putin said, “Western countries have been saying for centuries that they bring freedom and democracy to other nations. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of bringing democracy they suppressed and exploited, and instead of giving freedom they enslaved and oppressed. The unipolar world is inherently anti-democratic and unfree; it is false and hypocritical through and through.”

He accused the US of depriving the European countries of industries by cutting the Russian gas supply to the continent. He also blamed the US for the recent sabotage that damaged the Nord-2 stream that carries gas from Russia to Europe.

Putin said, “…by pressuring the EU to completely give up Russian energy and other resources, the United States is practically pushing Europe toward deindustrialisation in a bid to get its hands on the entire European market. These European elites understand everything – they do, but they prefer to serve the interests of others.”

“It seems incredible but it is a fact – by causing explosions on Nord Stream’s international gas pipelines passing along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, they have actually embarked on the destruction of Europe’s entire energy infrastructure. It is clear to everyone who stands to gain. Those who benefit are responsible, of course.”

Accusing the US of imposing its brutal rule on the world using crude force, Putin said, “The dictates of the US are backed up by crude force, on the law of the fist. Sometimes it is beautifully wrapped sometimes there is no wrapping at all, but the gist is the same – the law of the fist. Hence, the deployment and maintenance of hundreds of military bases in all corners of the world, NATO expansion, and attempts to cobble together new military alliances, such as AUKUS and the like. Much is being done to create a Washington-Seoul-Tokyo military-political chain. All states that possess or aspire to genuine strategic sovereignty and are capable of challenging Western hegemony, are automatically declared enemies.”

He said that the US has always used wars and miseries to profit and remain unscathed from one after another crisis. “And here it is important to recall that the West bailed itself out of its early 20th century challenges with World War I. Profits from World War II helped the United States finally overcome the Great Depression and become the largest economy in the world, and to impose on the planet the power of the dollar as a global reserve currency. And the 1980s crisis—things came to a head in the 1980s again—the West emerged from it unscathed largely by appropriating the inheritance and resources of the collapsed and defunct Soviet Union. That’s a fact.”

The rise of the new forces

Putin claimed, “The current neocolonial model is ultimately doomed; this much is obvious. But I repeat that its real masters will cling to it to the end. They simply have nothing to offer the world except to maintain the same system of plundering and racketeering.”

Pointing toward the US’s apathy towards the people of the world, Putin said, “They do not give a damn about the natural right of billions of people, the majority of humanity, to freedom and justice, the right to determine their own future.”

Putin predicted that the world has been heading towards a major revolutionary upheaval, and the western forces would suffer the brunt of the people’s discontent. “The world has entered a period of a fundamental, revolutionary transformation. New centres of power are emerging. They represent the majority – the majority! – of the international community. They are ready not only to declare their interests but also to protect them. They see in multipolarity an opportunity to strengthen their sovereignty, which means gaining genuine freedom, historical prospects, and the right to their own independent, creative and distinctive forms of development, to a harmonious process.”

He reiterated, “An essentially emancipatory, anti-colonial movement against unipolar hegemony is taking shape in the most diverse countries and societies. Its power will only grow with time. It is this force that will determine our future geopolitical reality.”

“The ongoing collapse of Western hegemony is irreversible. And I repeat: things will never be the same”, Putin asserted.

On the continuation of special military operations in Ukraine

Putin’s speech didn’t hint that Moscow is contemplating ending the seven-month-long special military operations in Ukraine. Hence, Putin asserted that the war is for a historical cause and shall continue until the future has been secured for all Russians.

“The battlefield to which destiny and history have called us is a battlefield for our people, for the great historical Russia. For the great historical Russia, for future generations, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We must protect them against enslavement and monstrous experiments that are designed to cripple their minds and souls.” – Putin said.

He also said, “Today, we are fighting so that it would never occur to anyone that Russia, our people, our language, or our culture can be erased from history. Today, we need a consolidated society, and this consolidation can only be based on sovereignty, freedom, creation, and justice. Our values ​​are humanity, mercy and compassion.”

Western reaction to Putin’s speech

Soon after Putin lambasted the western imperialist powers, the latter plunged into the fray to condemn and bully him and the Russian state. US President Joe Biden said that his government would never recognise the Ukrainian territories annexed by Russia. He also said the US and its allies are not afraid of Putin.

“America’s fully prepared, with our Nato allies, to defend every single inch of Nato territory”, Biden said at a time when Ukraine has not been accepted as a full member of the military bloc. Biden also accused Putin of using “reckless words and threats” in his speech but didn’t mention anything about Putin’s accusations regarding the US’s neo-colonial ambitions and acts. His government dismissed the referendum held in the Donbas and other regions as a sham.

Following Washington DC’s orders, European Union’s Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also refused to accept the referendum results. Leyen said, “the illegal annexation proclaimed by Putin won’t change anything”.

German Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht visited the neo-Nazi forces fighting Russia in Ukraine and promised them more weapons. Lambrecht told the media and the jeering Nazis that Germany would equip them with Iris-T SLM ground-based air defence system.

The scope for peace

Although Putin needed the war to get a foothold over the industrially-rich Donbas region and other Russian-majority regions where the people have suffered genocides by Ukrainian neo-Nazis, his government has not shown any intention to end the conflict unilaterally after winning significant victories.

But a prolonged war has catastrophic impacts, especially on the working class and the marginalised people suffering due to the steep rise in global food and fuel prices. Moreover, in this scenario, the American and European corporates are also creating artificial shortages in international markets by disrupting the global supply chain.

In this scenario, on the one hand, Ukraine should be freed from western influence, and, on the other, the differences should be peacefully resolved through dialogue and diplomacy. Neither Ukraine nor Russia can allow the US and the West to profiteer from their agony. It’s to be seen how the new developments shape the way to the future and whether peace can be established by ending the conflict soon.