The Daily - ‘A Knife to the Throat’: Putin’s Logic for Invading Ukraine

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

At 10 p.m. in Moscow on Monday night, Russian state television interrupted its regular programming to air an address from President Vladimir V. Putin about the Ukraine crisis.We look back on what Mr. Putin’s hourlong speech — remarkable for his overt display of emotion and grievance — revealed about his rationale for invading.Guest: Anton Troianovski, the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times.Have you lost a loved one during the pandemic? The Daily is working on a special episode memorializing those we have lost to the coronavirus. If you would like to share their name on the episode, please RECORD A VOICE MEMO and send it to us at [e-mail]. You can find more information and specific instructions here.Background reading: Mr. Putin’s speech sounded like a call to war, the culmination of a propaganda barrage orchestrated by Russian state media in recent days.The United States and its allies swiftly imposed economic sanctions on Russia for what President Biden denounced as the beginning of an “invasion of Ukraine.”Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. As the world has waited to see whether Russia will or will not invade Ukraine, and with early signs that an invasion may now have begun, much of the uncertainty has hinged on the question of what exactly Vladimir Putin is thinking. Today, my colleague Anton Choyanovsky says that the answer may lie in an unusual speech that Putin delivered on Monday night. It's Wednesday, February 23rd.

Anton, set the scene for us as this major speech from Vladimir Putin gets underway. Well, it's almost 10 p.m. in Moscow on Monday night when state television breaks into regular programming and shows Putin sitting in the Kremlin in a nondescript wood-paneled office, Russian flags behind him, a bank of telephones to his left. Dear citizens of Russia, dear friends, the topic of my speech is the events in Ukraine. And he starts to deliver a speech that's certainly the most remarkable speech I've seen him give in the time I've been in Moscow. Remarkable? Why? You know, it was this emotion, this sense of grievance, even this anger that you could see breaking through again and again as he spoke for almost an hour. And that we haven't seen to this degree in Putin's public appearances over the years.

You would see flashes of it. it, but to have him speaking to an hour, addressing the nation on national television in prime time, it was really something new, something different. And at a very high level, Anton, what is the goal of this speech? Well, that's another thing that made this speech so remarkable is that tensions were so incredibly high. You had the sense that after months of buildup, Putin would finally reveal his plans for Ukraine. Was he going to invade? What goals was he pursuing? And leading up to this, there was a lot of tension, and the Kremlin had really left this question wide open. What did Putin actually want?

And there was a sense, well, maybe we're about to finally find out. Right, which is why, Anton, we wanted to talk through this speech with you, because it feels like really it's our best chance of answering the question that pretty much the entire world has right now. How is Vladimir Putin thinking about Ukraine and about whether to invade it? And so we want to have you focus in on a few key passages from this speech as a way of doing that and to explain not just what Putin says here, but what he really means, especially given the subtext that is probably lost on non-Russians and on non-Ukrainians. So with that in mind, where should we start? out a historical rationale for, by all appearances, is Putin preparing his nation for potential

military action against Ukraine. He starts in medieval times. Since ancient times, people from ancient southwestern Russian lands were calling themselves Southwestern Russian lands were calling themselves Russians and Orthodox. That was happening until 17th century when part of these territories... He talks about this idea that what's present-day Ukraine largely consists of historically Russian lands, that people who lived there centuries ago called themselves Russians. He then moves on to the early years of the Soviet Union, of the Russian Revolution, and the years after that,

when he says Lenin and Stalin basically created present-day Ukraine in its present boundaries by granting it all these lands, like eastern Ukraine, that are really and truly Russian. And we have every reason to say now that it's Ukraine created by Vladimir Lenin. He's its creator and architect. And what is he up to here, Putin, with these references? I mean, we've heard a lot of this from him before, but it's really making it clear that he sees himself in what he's doing now, righting a historical wrong, a historical wrong that goes back essentially more than a century. And the historical wrong is that actions of Russian Soviet leaders a century ago separated the Russian people

into what became different countries. He's saying that present-day Ukraine was populated in large part by Russians, by people who considered themselves Russians, of its own historical territories. the Russian people laying a time bomb, as he called it, that then exploded after the Soviet breakup in 1991. So interestingly, Putin is, in a way, faulting previous Russian leaders for decisions they made that gave Ukraine a national identity, which clearly Putin thinks was a mistake to have ever done. And he's using this history lesson, accurately or inaccurately, to say that Ukraine and its people really belong to Russia. That's very much the message, yes. And a bit later in the speech, he brings it up to the present day

in this very ominous way by bringing up a process that Ukraine has been going through in recent years called decommunization. And what does that mean, decommunization? So decommunization is this process that Ukraine started going through after their pro-Western revolution in 2014 that involved things like tearing down all the Lenin statues, changing names of cities that were named after Soviet figures. Then Putin brings that up,

talks about Ukrainians as ungrateful for knocking down all these Lenin statues. And then he delivers this line, looking straight at the camera, talking really tough. And he says, you want decommunization? Well, we are quite happy with that. But don't stop halfway. You want decommunization? Well, this suits us just fine. But why stop halfway? We are ready to show you what would mean actual decommunization for Ukraine. We are ready to show you what real decommunization would mean for Ukraine. And that was just a clear threat to essentially dismember the country, to say, OK, well, then we can take away all the territory that, in Putin's telling,

rightfully belongs to Russia and that the communists mistakenly gave to Ukraine. Wow. Which could mean the whole Black Sea coast. It could mean eastern Ukraine. It could even mean Kiev, which Russians see as the birthplace, essentially, of their civilization. So what Putin is saying here, and it's a threat, is if Ukrainians want to rid themselves of their communist history, then they should also rid themselves of the Ukrainian territory that Russia granted them during the communist era. He's offering a rationale

for basically invading Ukraine. Yeah, because he's saying we can do it for you if you don't want to do it yourself. We can take away the land for you. So ultimately, this is as much an emotional argument as it is a historical one

for why Putin, in his mind, should be able to send troops into Ukraine, which is that Ukraine isn't real. It's not a legitimate nation. It's just a historical part of Russia. Yes, exactly. And Putin takes that argument a step further. And calls Ukraine basically a colony of the West. You know, Putin says he doesn't want to literally rebuild the Soviet Union. Putin says he doesn't want to reattach all the 14 former Soviet republics that aren't Russia back to Russia.

But he says Ukraine is different. Ukraine is particularly illegitimate because of the pro-Western revolution that happened there in 2014. To most of the world, you know, it was a genuine uprising against a Russia-friendly leader who went back on plans to get closer to the European Union. But to Putin, that was an armed coup. In 2014, into coup d'etat. And a front, essentially, for the U.S. and American efforts to undermine Russia. So first he's arguing it's illegitimate because, historically speaking, it's part of Russia.

Now he's manufacturing this case that it's illegitimate because it's secretly being run by the West. Yeah, it also dovetails with that paranoia that you see in Putin and the security establishment around him, this idea that the U.S. is always out to get us. Anytime we see the U.S. supporting pro-democracy movements in the former Soviet regions, that that is necessarily an attempt to essentially undermine Russia. And so then Putin goes from that to this even more inflammatory claim. The idea that Ukraine is carrying out a genocide against Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine. And our Western colleagues proclaim themselves as the only representatives of this free world.

They prefer not to notice this as if there is nothing like this happening. There is no genocide perpetuated against 14 million people. Ukraine has passed laws promoting the Ukrainian language, something that has infuriated some people in Russia who say that the Russian language should be equally promoted in Ukraine. But of course, the idea of a genocide, the idea of any kind of mass killing going on in

Ukraine is completely false. But it is something that helps Putin even further build the case here in Russia of the Ukrainian government being illegitimate, being a danger to Russians all over the world. So we're seeing a kind of kitchen sink approach where elements of history that are true are being mingled with hyperbolic and in some cases completely false arguments about why Ukraine is not legitimate and why he thinks he should be able to roll in with troops and tanks. That's right. I mean, the troops and tanks part is left unsaid in this speech, but in this context that we're in right now of fearing a Russian invasion,

that is very much the message here. We'll be right back. Anton, what's the next section of Putin's speech that stands out to you and that we should focus on? So he pivots from making this historical and ethnic case against Ukrainian independence to one centered on Russian security, something that he is obviously deeply passionate about. And if Ukraine was to join NATO, it would serve as a direct threat to the security of Russia. He centers on the fact that Ukraine has pursued membership in NATO, the Western alliance that's led by the U.S. And NATO has said that Ukraine will become a NATO member, but it's clear also that that's not going to happen anytime soon. But to Putin, we say, OK, it is not going to happen tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow, then what will it change? In historical context, nothing. The fact that it's not going to happen anytime soon is not that important. He sees just the very possibility of Ukraine's NATO membership in his telling as

a fundamental threat to Russian security. You know, he sees it as kind of the apotheosis, the worst part of the waves of eastward expansion of NATO that we've seen over the last couple decades. At one point in the speech, he actually addresses the U.S. over the last couple of decades. At one point in the speech, he actually addresses the U.S. Okay, you don't want to see a friend in us, an ally in us. But why do you want to make an enemy out of us? He says, why was it necessary to make an enemy out of us? Sort of saying, why did you have to expand so much in our direction?

And then he goes on to answer that himself. He says, they don't need such a big and independent country as Russia. Well, it's because the U.S. didn't want such a large independent country as Russia, underscoring his point that a central pillar of American policy is allegedly weakening Russia. Anton, is he right to argue that? I mean, when you think about NATO's expansion over the past few decades, it has moved east and taken in countries that are closer and closer to Russia. And knowing that the history of NATO is that it comes into existence to keep Russia in check, that's just the history of it, is Putin right to see the eastward expansion of NATO as a

kind of provocation and a threat? I mean, obviously, those countries that joined NATO, like Poland, like the Baltic states, saw Russia as a threat and saw NATO membership as sort of key to their sovereignty and independence. And of course, the NATO alliance describes itself as a defensive alliance that does not threaten Russia. But yes, of course, it's not just Putin here in Moscow that sees NATO as a threat. You know, World War II was ended only 77 years ago. And that was obviously an invasion from the West by Nazi Germany that caused monumental, incredible harm. So yes, NATO expansion is in fact a touchy subject here. It's something that annoyed a lot of people in Moscow. But the way that Putin has made fighting NATO expansion so central to his

entire foreign policy is really remarkable. And he's punctuating it in this speech by asking the U.S. why it had to be this way. Exactly. He's asking why it had to be this way. And then, you know, he goes on to talk specifically about what would happen if various missiles were based in Ukraine. You know, you can tell he's spent an enormous time thinking about this and studying this. He says, well, if the U.S. were to base a Tomahawk cruise missile in Ukraine, it could hit Moscow within 35 minutes. If it was a ballistic missile, it could hit Moscow within 7 minutes. If it was a hypersonic missile, it could be 4 minutes or 5 minutes.

So, obviously, the U.S. says it has no plans to put such weapons in Ukraine. But again, you see how central this perceived threat is to Putin. So just to be clear, Putin is saying if Ukraine were to someday join NATO and the U.S. were to put weapons systems in Ukraine, and the U.S. were to put weapon systems in Ukraine, he's calculating in his head the risks that that would present to his government in Moscow. And it sounds like he's literally counting the minutes that it would take for a missile in Ukraine to reach him. The direct quote, what Putin said there was,

it is like a knife to the throat. That's how he sees it, and that's the kind of language he uses on this issue. And so this becomes yet another justification for taking military action against Ukraine to keep it out of NATO and therefore prevent weapons that could reach him in 35 or 15 minutes from ever getting put by the U.S. in Ukraine. Exactly.

And, you know, there was another moment in the speech where I really heard him pointing at the U.S. as a way of justifying a potential invasion. the U.S. as a way of justifying a potential invasion. And that was a moment where he brought up this really far-fetched idea. We also heard statements about Ukraine wanting to create their own nuclear weapon. That Ukraine could develop nuclear weapons. And he says, if Ukraine has a weapon of mass destruction, the situation in the world, in Europe, especially for us, for Russia, will change drastically. If Ukraine acquires weapons of mass destruction,

the situation in the world and in Europe will drastically change, especially for us, for Russia. of mass destruction. The situation in the world and in Europe will drastically change, especially for us, for Russia. We cannot help but react to this real threat. And I can't imagine that he didn't deliver that line, not thinking about 2003, about Colin Powell and his famous UN address. That invasion of Iraq by the United States that Russia obviously opposed is something you hear Putin talking about time and time again. And I think right now what you're seeing is Putin looking back at military action

that the U.S. undertook, you know, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And he's really saying, you know, he's never said it outright, but that's really what you hear when you read between the lines. It's if the U.S. did this for what it claimed were its important national security interests or humanitarian reasons, then we should be able to do the same thing. Hmm. So when Putin raises the possibility of weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine, which you just called far-fetched, what you're really hearing is Putin saying something else entirely,

hearing is Putin saying something else entirely, which is that if the U.S. and its allies can invade a country like Iraq on what turn out to be very shaky grounds, then he should be able to invade a country like Ukraine on whatever grounds he comes up with. Well, he would also say that, you know, the U.S. invaded Iraq, a country on the other side of the world. Whereas here, Putin is talking about a country that is Russia's neighbor. And he's saying, you know, if that country becomes a threat to us, it really is an existential issue. Another thing Putin brings up all the time is the idea of double standards. And so he's saying, well, if the U.S. can get away with it, then we should be able to do this too. So Anton, how does this speech ultimately end?

Well, this whole nearly hour-long speech has been about historical grievances, ethnic wrongs, issues of Russian security. And then at the end, he finally gets to talking about what might come next. Now, almost every day, they are shelling settlements in Donbass. And he brings up those separatist territories in eastern Ukraine, you know, the ones kind of in the heart of what Putin sees as a rightfully Russian region, one where Russia has backed this separatist movement since 2014. And they are not interested in peaceful resolution.

Vice versa. They want to start Blitzkrieg, like it happened back in 2014 and 2015. He's been claiming that Ukraine plans an offensive against these separatist territories, that it plans to retake them by force, which, by the way, Kiev is denying having any plans to retake the territories. And in this very end of the speech, he says a very worrying line. Kiev must immediately stop hostilities. Otherwise, the responsibility for the possible continuation of the bloodshed will lie entirely on the conscience of Ukraine's ruling regime.

I'm confident that I will have support of the people of Russia, all the patriotic forces of Russia. Thank you for your attention. So, number one, he's calling it a ruling regime. He's, again, not even recognizing the legitimacy of the government. And number two, of course, he's giving us a preview of the fact that the bloodshed here could continue. And that was classic Putin, not telling us what's coming, leaving us guessing, but giving us the sense that what comes next could be really bad. Right. An image of a very bloody war. Exactly.

an image of a very bloody war. Exactly. So, Anton, what were you thinking when the speech ended and you no doubt sat down and tried to make sense of it? Well, I have to say it gave me goosebumps. It was this feeling that we had just heard nearly an hour of this obviously flawed but very comprehensive argument from multiple directions about why Ukraine right now is a fundamental threat to Russia, why the situation is something that needs to be addressed with the utmost urgency. It didn't really leave much room for diplomacy or negotiation

or space for concessions for Putin to make here. Right. This is not a speech that argues for de-escalation. And perhaps Putin is posturing, but it very much feels that what this speech ultimately accomplishes is that it lays the groundwork for major military action in Ukraine. Exactly. And immediately after that speech, state television cuts to Putin signing a decree that, among other things, orders the Russian army to carry out, quote unquote, peacekeeping functions in these separatist territories in eastern Ukraine. Then the next day, Putin gets the Russian parliament

to authorize the use of military force in Ukraine and delivers a news conference where he even more directly threatens the possibility of war. So at this point, it's 1 a.m. Moscow time, Wednesday morning. All those forces arrayed around Ukraine have not, as far as we know, crossed into Ukrainian-held territory yet. But President Putin has now laid out an extremely comprehensive case for why, in his view, using military force would be justified. using military force would be justified. Well, Anton, it is very late there.

Thank you very much and get some rest. Thank you, Michael. By Tuesday evening, in response to Russia's actions, the United States, the United Nations, and leaders across Europe condemned the government of Vladimir Putin, and several of them announced plans to punish it. Germany said it would halt the authorization of a major gas pipeline from Russia called Nord Stream 2. Canada said it would ban its citizens from engaging in financial transactions with the two Ukrainian regions where Putin has authorized troops.

And the Biden administration announced a set of economic sanctions against Russian financial institutions and Russian elites. He directly attacked Ukraine's right to exist. In remarks from the White House, Biden specifically cited Putin's Monday night speech, saying it made clear that he was uninterested in diplomacy and was bent on aggression toward Ukraine. He's setting up a rationale to take more territory by force, in my view. And if we listened to his speech last night,

and many of you did, I know, he's setting up a rationale to go much further. This is the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, as he indicated and asked permission to be able to do. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, a jury found the three white men who had already been found guilty of murdering Ahmaud Arbery guilty of a federal hate crime. In doing so, the jury found that the men were motivated by racism when they chased the 25-year-old black man through their neighborhood and shot him to death. Prosecutors at the Department of Justice had initially resisted holding a hate crimes trial,

instead accepting a plea deal from the three men. But Arbery's family persuaded a federal judge to reject that deal and pursue a trial. I now want to address the members of the DOJ. You guys accepted a plea deal with these three murderers who took my son's life. After the guilty verdict, Arbery's mother criticized the federal prosecutors. On what the DOJ did today, they was made to do today. It wasn't because of what they wanted to do.

They were made to do their job today. Today's episode was produced by Austin Mitchell, Michael Simon Johnson, and Muj Zaydi. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn and Patricia Willans, contains original music by Marion Lozano and Alisha Ba'itu, and engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderland. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.