By Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Vladimir Poutinehonored like a Russian tsar when he was sworn in for another six-year presidential term, had a double-edged message for the West: the Kremlin is ready to talk but Russia is preparing for victory in Ukraine.
Putin, who rose to the top of the Kremlin just eight years after the fall of the Soviet Union, will overtake Joseph Stalin and become the longest-serving Russian leader since Empress Catherine the Great if he completes his term.
The 71-year-old former KGB spy exuded confidence in the carefully choreographed inauguration that the West and opponents, many in prison or abroad, presented as a fig leaf of democracy covering a corrupt Russian autocracy.
As Russia’s elite waited in the St. Andrew’s Hall of the Kremlin’s Grand Palace, where the imperial throne once sat, Putin studied documents in his office before walking the Kremlin’s corridors to greet guards, even stopping to study a photo on the wall without hurrying.
“We do not refuse dialogue with Western states,” Putin said after taking the oath, adding that he was ready for negotiations on security and strategic stability, but only if there were no “d ‘arrogance’ on the part of the United States and its allies.
Russia’s supreme leader for more than 24 years promised victory and said all Russians were now “responsible for our thousand-year-old history and our ancestors.”
He left the ceremony to the sound of the music “Hail” from the opera “A Life for the Tsar” by Mikhail Glinka. The words “Hello, hello, my Russia!” Hello, you are my Russian land” rang out in the Kremlin. The original words are “Hail, hail, our Russian Tsar!”.
“The authority of our president is higher than ever – higher than that of the American president, higher even than that of the Russian tsar. Many things depend on our president,” said Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov.
WAR
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has triggered the worst breakdown in relations between Russia and the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Russia advances on the front line and its artillery production exceeds that of NATO.
The West views Putin as an autocrat, a war criminal, a killer and even, as US President Joe Biden said earlier this year, a “crazy SOB” who US officials say enslaved Russia in a corrupt dictatorship.
Putin presents the war as part of an existential battle with a declining and decadent West that he says humiliated Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 by encroaching on what he sees as the sphere of influence from Moscow, including Ukraine.
Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), told Reuters that Putin’s speech was an invitation to the West to start dialogue.
“On the one hand, it is an invitation to the West for equal cooperation and on the other, it is the firm belief that Russia will ensure its own development and security,” Naryshkin said.
What if the West doesn’t want to talk?
“Then let them think,” Naryshkin said with a smile.
The signal comes just a day after Putin ordered exercises to practice deploying tactical nuclear weapons after what Moscow said were threats from France, Britain and the United States.
Putin’s suggestion of a ceasefire in Ukraine to freeze the war was rejected by the United States after contacts between intermediaries, Reuters reported in February.
RUSSIA
In Russia, the war helped Putin tighten his grip on power and increase his popularity among Russians. According to official results, he won 88% of the vote in the March elections.
The United States said it would not send anyone to take the oath of office and that the election had not been free and fair, but said it still considered Putin to be Russia’s president.
Britain, Canada and most EU countries boycotted the event, a move that senior Russian officials called unnecessary and meaningless to anyone except the West.
The main points of Putin’s brief speech were: the danger of upheaval and stagnation, and that Russia’s unique civilization must develop with a transforming world.
Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin’s first deputy chief of staff, told Reuters the election was an unprecedented event in Russian electoral history and indicated a new level of “internal consolidation.”
Sergei Chemezov, who worked with Putin in East Germany and is a close ally, said Putin had brought stability, something even his critics should welcome.
“For Russia, this is the continuation of our path, this is stability – you can ask any citizen on the street,” Chemezov said. The West, he said, “will understand that Putin represents stability for Russia rather than some kind of new person.”
There is no obvious successor.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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