By Guy Faulconbridge
MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin will update Russia’s elite on the war in Ukraine on Tuesday, nearly one year to the day since ordering an invasion that has triggered the biggest confrontation with the West since the depths of the Cold War.
Putin will focus on what he casts as the “special military operation” in Ukraine, give his analysis of the international situation and outline his vision of Russia’s development after the West slapped on the severest sanctions in recent history.
“At such a crucial and very complicated juncture in our development, our lives, everyone is waiting for a message in the hope of hearing an assessment of what is happening, an assessment of the special military operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state television.
The speech, to members of both houses of parliament and to military commanders and soldiers, is due to begin at 0900 GMT in central Moscow.
The Ukraine conflict is by far the biggest bet by a Kremlin chief since at least the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union – and a gamble Western leaders such as U.S.
President Joe Biden say he must lose.
Russian forces have suffered three major battlefield reversals since the war began but still control around one fifth of Ukraine.
Tens of thousands of men have been killed, and Putin, 70, now says Russia is locked in an existential battle with an arrogant West which he says wants to carve up Russia and steal its vast natural resources.
The West and Ukraine reject that narrative, and say NATO expansion eastwards is no justification for what they say is an imperial-style land grab doomed to failure.
CHINA
With the West supporting Ukraine, China’s position has come under scrutiny in recent weeks.
China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, is due to visit in Moscow on Tuesday, and may possibly meet Putin, as the United States says it is concerned Beijing may be considering supplying weapons to Russia.
Chinese weapons supplies to Russia would risk a potential escalation of the Ukraine war into a confrontation between Russia and China on the one side and Ukraine and the U.S.-led NATO military alliance on the other.
China is “deeply worried” that the Ukraine conflict could spiral out of control, foreign minister Qin Gang said on Tuesday, and called on certain countries to stop “fuelling the fire” in an apparent dig at the United States.
“China is deeply worried that the Ukraine conflict will continue to escalate or even spiral out of control” Qin said in a speech at a forum held at the foreign ministry.
“We urge certain countries to immediately stop fuelling the fire,” he said in comments that appeared to be directed at the United States, adding that they must “stop hyping up ‘today Ukraine, tomorrow Taiwan'”.
In Russia, Putin has no serious rivals.
Official opinion polls show his approval rating remains around 80%, though leaders of the disparate and divided opposition say such polling is fiction.
Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny accused Putin on Monday of destroying Russia’s future for the sake of his own personal ambitions.
“The real reasons for this war are the political and economic problems within Russia, Putin’s desire to hold on to power at any cost, and his obsession with his own historical legacy,” Navalny said.
“He wants to go down in history as ‘the conqueror tsar’.”
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Osborn, Alison Williams and Simon Cameron-Moore)
