speech of putin today

Oneindia (Video)

Putin’s Fiery News Speech: Vows Unstoppable Growth of Russia’s Nuclear Deterrence | Watch

Posted: December 16, 2024 | Last updated: December 16, 2024

In a fiery and bold address, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to ensure the unstoppable growth of Russia's nuclear deterrence, signaling that Moscow will continue to prioritize its nuclear capabilities as a core element of its defense strategy. Putin's speech comes amid heightened tensions with the West, as the global arms control environment continues to deteriorate. The Russian leader emphasized the need to strengthen Russia's strategic nuclear forces to maintain national security and deter potential threats. His remarks underline the country's commitment to enhancing its military power in the face of perceived external challenges, particularly from NATO and the U.S.#PutinSpeech #NuclearDeterrence #RussiaMilitaryPower #PutinOnNukes #RussiaDefense #NuclearStrategy #PutinVowsGrowth #RussiaSecurity #NuclearArmsRace #PutinSpeechLive #RussiaStrength #NuclearFuture #GlobalSecurity #PutinWarnings #RussianLeadership

More for You

4 killed, 5 hurt in shooting at Christian school in Wisconsin

How Chloe Bennet Is Breaking Free From Hollywood Stereotypes

Trump wants to end daylight saving time: We’ve tried before — here’s what happened

How to Unlock an iPhone Without a Passcode

Dolphins Provide Update on Severity of Grant DuBose Injury Following Hospitalization

Upgrade Ordinary Mason Jars Into Stunning Holiday Decor With A Simple DIY

More than 120 House Democrats send letter to Biden urging him to ratify Equal Rights Amendment

22 of Joanna Gaines’ Recipes and Favorite Foods

Dave Ramsey warns Americans on retirement, 401(k)s and Roth IRAs

D.C.'s cashless business ban goes into effect soon

The Honda That Outsells The Civic And The Accord Combined

16-year-olds are hard to shop for. We found 49 gifts that they won’t roll their eyes at

Bosses: Gen Z and millennial workers have no clue what you’re talking about when you use these acronyms

The Yellowstone Ending, Explained

35 Meaningful Christmas Eve Traditions To Make Your Own This Year

10 Buffy Filler Episodes That Changed the Buffyverse Forever

Penn State Starting QB Drew Allar Makes Decision on Senior Season

Top 10 Best US Presidents

Patrick Mahomes injury: Updates, return date, what to know about Chiefs QB

Ukrainian air defense intercepts 27 Shahed drones, no casualties reported

• CNA Explains
• Sustainability
• Latest News
• Mental Health Matters
• News Reports
• Documentaries & Shows
• TV Schedule
• CNA938 Live
• Radio Schedule
• Singapore Parliament
• Mental Health
• Interactives
• Entertainment
• Style & Beauty
• Experiences
• Remarkable Living
• Send us a news tip
• Events & Partnerships
• Business Blueprint
• Health Matters
• The Asian Traveller
• Learning Minds

Trending Topics

Follow our news, recent searches, putin cheers 'landmark' 2024, says troops have upper hand in ukraine, advertisement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a congress of the United Russia political party in Moscow, Russia, Dec 14, 2024. (File photo: Sputnik/Sergey Bobylev/Pool via REUTERS)

MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday (Dec 16) hailed his army's accelerating advance in Ukraine and praised 2024 as a "landmark" year in the course of Moscow's military offensive on its Western-backed neighbour.

Addressing top military generals in an end-of-year meeting, the Kremlin leader struck a defiant and optimistic tone, claiming his troops had the upper hand across the entire front line.

He also hit out at what he called a Western "hybrid war" and its attempts to inflict a "strategic defeat" on Moscow.

The comments come with Russia's army advancing across eastern Ukraine at its fastest pace since the first weeks of the offensive.

Both Moscow and Kyiv are seeking to improve their position on the battlefield before US President-elect Donald Trump comes to power in January.

The Republican has repeatedly said he could strike a ceasefire in hours, without presenting a plan, and speculation about peace talks is mounting.

"STRATEGIC INITIATIVE"

"Russian troops are firmly holding the strategic initiative along the entire line of contact," Putin said in the televised meeting with army bosses and defence ministry officials.

He said Russia's army had seized 189 Ukrainian settlements this year and called 2024 a "landmark year in the achievement of the goals of the special military operation", using Moscow's official language for its campaign.

Speaking after Putin at the same meeting, Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov said Russia's troops had seized a total of almost 4,500 sq km of Ukrainian territory this year and were now gaining around 30 sq km a day.

He said Ukraine controlled less than 1 per cent of the eastern Lugansk region, and around 25 to 30 per cent of the Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.

Russia claimed in 2022 to annex all four, despite not having full control over any of them.

Russia's army said Monday it had captured another small village in the Donetsk region, as part of its latest advance.

AFP analysis of the Institute for the Study of War data found that in November Russian troops advanced at their fastest pace since March 2022 - the first full month of the offensive.

Russia close to achieving goals in Ukraine war, Putin's spy chief says

At least 30 North Korean soldiers killed and wounded in Russia's Kursk region: Ukraine

Troop "flow".

Putin also hailed Russia's military industry and defence enterprises in providing advanced weapons and equipment to support Moscow's army.

He said Russia was working on the mass production of missile systems - including hypersonic ones like the Oreshnik missile he fired on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro last month - and indicated troops were using AI-powered systems.

Amid signs of economic volatility at home, the ex-KGB spy, in power for a quarter of a century, defended Russia's vast defence and security spending.

Military spending has surpassed 6 per cent of GDP, while overall defence and security outlays are almost 9 per cent.

"It is not, strangely enough, the biggest expenditure in the world, even among countries that do not have any armed conflict," Putin said.

"Nevertheless, it is a lot of money, and here we need to use it very rationally," he added.

Kyiv, by contrast, relies on Western financial and military support to fund and wage its defensive campaign.

There are fears there that Trump could cut US aid, potentially dealing a devastating blow to Ukraine's ability to hold off Russia's advance.

Ukraine also faces manpower shortages across the frontlines and is being pressured by Washington to consider lowering its draft age from 25 to 18 to recruit more soldiers.

Putin said that Russia - which offers huge salaries and sign-up bonuses to new soldiers - faced no such problems.

He said 430,000 people had signed up to fight this year, up from around 300,000 in 2023.

"And this flow of volunteers is not stopping," he said.

Sign up for our newsletters

Get our pick of top stories and thought-provoking articles in your inbox

Get the CNA app

Stay updated with notifications for breaking news and our best stories

Get WhatsApp alerts

Join our channel for the top reads for the day on your preferred chat app

Related Topics

Also worth reading, this browser is no longer supported.

We know it's a hassle to switch browsers but we want your experience with CNA to be fast, secure and the best it can possibly be.

To continue, upgrade to a supported browser or, for the finest experience, download the mobile app.

Upgraded but still having issues? Contact us

‘Internal betrayal’ in Russia: Transcript of Putin’s address

The Russian president says his country is fighting for its future, as he accuses Wagner chief Prighozin of fomenting armed civil conflict.

Speaking during an emergency televised address in Moscow on Saturday, President Vladimir Putin has promised that he would not allow Russia to slip into civil war, after Yevgeny Prighozin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary force, seized a key military headquarters overseeing the offensive in Ukraine.

Below is the full transcript of Putin’s address:

“I appeal to the citizens of Russia, to the personnel of the armed forces, law enforcement and security services, fighters and commanders currently fighting on their positions, repelling the enemy attacks, doing it heroically.

I spoke to the commanders in all directions last night. I appeal also to those who were deceptively pulled into the criminal adventure, pushed towards a serious crime of an armed mutiny.

Today Russia is fighting fiercely for its future, repelling the aggression of neo-Nazis and their handlers. Directed against us is the whole military, economical and information machines of the West.

We fight for the lives and security of our people; for our sovereignty and independence; for the right to remain Russia, a state with a thousand-year history.

This battle, where the fate of our people is being decided, requires all our forces to be united; unity, consolidation and responsibility. Everything that weakens us must be put to the side, any differences that may be used or are used by our enemies to disrupt us from within.

Thus, the actions splitting our unity are a betrayal of our people, of our brothers in combat who fight now at the front line. It’s a stab in the back of our country and our people.

It was such a blow that was dealt to Russia in 1917 when the country was fighting in World War I, but its victory was stolen.

Intrigues, bickering and politicking behind the back of the army and the people turned out to be the greatest catastrophe, the destruction of the army and the state, loss of huge territories, resulting in a tragedy and a civil war.

Russians were killing Russians, brothers killing brothers. The beneficiaries of that were various political chevaliers of fortune and foreign powers who divided the country, and tore it into parts.

We will not let this happen again. We will protect our people and state from any threats, including internal betrayal. What we’re facing is exactly a betrayal.

Big ambitions and personal interests led to treason. Betrayal of one’s own country and people and of the cause that fighters of Wagner were dying for alongside our soldiers. Heroes who liberated Soledar and Artemovsk, towns and cities of the Donbas, who fought and gave their lives to Novorossiya and for the unity of the Russian world. Their name and glory have been betrayed by those who are trying to organise the mutiny, pushing the country into anarchy and fratricide, to a defeat, in the end, and capitulation.

I repeat: any internal mutiny is a deadly threat to our state, to us as a nation. It’s a blow against Russia, against our people. And our actions to defend the fatherland from such a threat will be brutal.

Anyone who consciously went on the path of betrayal, who prepared the armed mutiny, went on the path of blackmail and terrorist actions, will be punished inevitably. They will answer before the law and our people.

The armed forces and other departments have received the necessary orders. Additional anti-terrorist security measures are now being implemented in Moscow, Moscow region, and a number of other regions. Decisive actions will be taken to stabilise the situation in Rostov-on-Don, which still remains difficult. The operation of civilian and military control departments is practically blocked.

As a president of Russia and the commander-in-chief, as a citizen of Russia, I will do everything to defend the country, protect the Constitution, lives and safety, liberty of the citizens.

Those who organised and prepared the military mutiny, who turned weapons against their comrades-in-arms, have betrayed Russia, and will be held accountable for that.

And those who are being pulled into the crime, I’m calling on you to not make this crucial, tragic, unrepeatable mistake.

Make the only right choice – stop participating in criminal actions.

I believe that we will defend and preserve what’s sacred for us. And together with the motherland, we will overcome all challenges, and become even stronger.”

Advertisement

Supported by

Putin Says West Risks Nuclear Conflict if It Intervenes More in Ukraine

“We also have weapons that can strike targets on their territory,” Mr. Putin said in an annual speech. “Do they not understand this?”

• Share full article

By Anton Troianovski

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said the West faced the prospect of nuclear conflict if it intervened more directly in the war in Ukraine, using an annual speech to the nation on Thursday to escalate his threats against Europe and the United States.

Mr. Putin said NATO countries that were helping Ukraine strike Russian territory or might consider sending their own troops “must, in the end, understand” that “all this truly threatens a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons, and therefore the destruction of civilization.”

“We also have weapons that can strike targets on their territory,” Mr. Putin said. “Do they not understand this?”

The Russian leader alluded to comments by President Emmanuel Macron of France this week raising the possibility of sending troops from NATO countries to Ukraine, a scenario the Kremlin said would lead to the “inevitability” of a direct conflict between Russia and the Western alliance.

The United States and other Western governments have largely tried to distance themselves from Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory, and Mr. Macron’s remarks about the possibility of Western troops being sent to Ukraine drew quick rebukes from other Western officials, who have ruled out such deployments.

Mr. Putin, however, considers Russian-occupied Ukraine to be Russian territory, and he seized on Mr. Macron’s remarks to amplify his threat. “We remember the fate of those who once sent their contingents to the territory of our country,” Mr. Putin said, an apparent reference to the invasions of Hitler and Napoleon. “But now the consequences for potential interventionists will be much more tragic.”

Mr. Putin’s threats on Thursday came in the opening minutes of his annual state-of-the-nation speech, a keystone event in the Kremlin calendar in which the president declares his plans and priorities in a televised address to hundreds of officials, lawmakers and other members of Russia’s ruling elite.

This year, the speech took on added significance because of Russia’s presidential elections, scheduled for March 15-17, in which Mr. Putin is running for another six-year term. He is assured of winning, but the Kremlin has mounted a concerted publicity campaign ahead of the vote, seeking to use it as a stamp of public approval for Mr. Putin’s rule, and by extension, his war.

The speech came at a geopolitically delicate time: More than two years into the war, Russia has taken the initiative on the battlefield, military aid is stalled in the U.S. Congress, and Western governments are at odds over how best to support Ukraine.

At home, Mr. Putin is showing no sign of slowing his crackdown on the opposition, which suffered a crushing blow with the death of its imprisoned leader, Aleksei A. Navalny .

“Russia’s political system is one of the foundations of the country’s sovereignty,” Mr. Putin said in his speech, suggesting he would continue to stifle what he casts as Western-organized dissent. “We will not let anyone interfere in our domestic affairs.”

Mr. Putin has repeatedly made veiled nuclear threats against the West since he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago, seeking to leverage Russia’s enormous nuclear arsenal to deter Europe and the United States from supporting Ukraine.

He had appeared to dial down that rhetoric in the past year. But on Thursday, he returned to it, coupling his threats with a claim that he was ready to resume arms-control negotiations with the United States — but only, he suggested, if Washington was ready to discuss the war in Ukraine as well.

“Russia is ready for a dialogue with the United States on matters of strategic stability,” Mr. Putin said, a reference to arms-control talks with Washington that had been briefly underway before Russia’s invasion.

In an apparent reference to Ukraine, Mr. Putin added: “This must, naturally, be done only as a single complex, including all those aspects that affect the security of our country.”

Fyodor Lukyanov, a Moscow-based foreign-policy expert close to the Kremlin, said Mr. Putin’s warnings were probably prompted by Mr. Macron’s remark earlier in the week that “nothing should be ruled out” regarding the possibility of a NATO country sending troops to Ukraine.

More broadly, he added, Mr. Putin was responding to Western pledges to provide more powerful arms to Ukraine as Russia’s battlefield advantage grows — including sending Kyiv missiles that could reach deeper inside Russian territory.

“Macron is not the only one who’s starting to say that a Russian victory cannot be accepted,” Mr. Lukyanov said. “In the West, they’re not talking about a peace deal — they’re talking about not letting Russia succeed.”

Mr. Putin’s goal, he said, was to avoid more direct Western involvement in the war and to “achieve negotiations on terms acceptable to Russia.” In Thursday’s speech, Mr. Putin signaled that he wanted those negotiations to encompass not just the future of Ukraine but also “equal and indivisible security in Eurasia.”

Mr. Putin previously sought a sweeping security arrangement with NATO in late 2021 , weeks before he launched his full-scale invasion. At the time, Western officials dismissed Russia’s proposal as a nonstarter, because it would have codified a Russian sphere of influence across the former Soviet Union.

The White House, for its part, has rebuffed Mr. Putin’s efforts to put the United States at the center of any negotiations about the war in Ukraine. American officials have said that the United States has not and will not negotiate on behalf of Ukraine.

Mr. Putin’s threats against the West took up only a few minutes of a speech that lasted more than two hours. Much of the address focused on bread-and-butter domestic issues like highways, health care, energy infrastructure and education.

But Mr. Putin framed all those domestic priorities as being contingent on the success of his invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin refers to as the “special military operation.” He offered no new details on the war’s goals or how it might end, saying only that Russia aimed to “root out Nazism” — a reference to his frequent, false claims about Ukraine being run by “Nazis.”

“I will underline the most important thing,” Mr. Putin said at the end of his speech. “The fulfillment of all the targeted plans today depends directly on our soldiers, officers, volunteers — all the military personnel fighting right now on the front.”

It was a signal that Mr. Putin intends to use his March re-election to portray Russia as committed to the war, with the overwhelming majority of the public behind it. Mr. Putin described the war’s soldiers and supporters as Russia’s “true elite,” and unveiled a training program and other measures meant to elevate veterans to management positions in civilian life in areas like government, education and business.

With just more two weeks to go until the election, the Kremlin turned Mr. Putin’s speech into a nationwide event. It was shown on billboards in Moscow and in movie theaters across the country, the Russian state media reported. And on social media, some celebrities rushed to show their fealty.

Among them: the television presenter Nastya Ivleyeva, who hosted the hedonistic, “almost naked” theme party in Moscow in December that became a reckoning for Russian stars seen as insufficiently adhering to the “traditional values” that Mr. Putin venerates.

“I watched the president’s address for the first time this year,” Ms. Ivleyeva wrote on the Telegram social messaging app. “The initiatives and projects that were announced sincerely resonate with me, and I know that I will vote for them.”

Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The Times. He writes about Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. More about Anton Troianovski