The Washington Submit is publishing the complete, official Kremlin translation of Putin’s speech beneath so our readers can learn Putin’s phrases for themselves. Some transliterations have been modified to match Submit fashion. The speech repeats a lot of false accusations, together with the declare that Russia is eliminating “Nazis” from japanese Ukraine and that Ukrainian forces are perpetrating a “genocide” within the Donbas areas. It doesn’t point out the quite a few allegations of atrocities dedicated by Russian troops in Ukraine.
It isn’t clear when the speech was recorded, but it surely was launched on the identical day that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Biden have been resulting from converse on the United Nations Basic Meeting.
The topic of this deal with is the state of affairs in Donbas and the course of the particular army operation to liberate it from the neo-Nazi regime, which seized energy in Ukraine in 2014 as the results of an armed state coup.
At the moment I’m addressing you — all residents of our nation, folks of various generations, ages and ethnicities, the folks of our nice Motherland, all who’re united by the good historic Russia, troopers, officers and volunteers who’re preventing on the entrance line and doing their fight responsibility, our brothers and sisters within the Donetsk and Luhansk folks’s republics, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia areas, and different areas which were liberated from the neo-Nazi regime.
The difficulty issues the mandatory, crucial measures to guard the sovereignty, safety and territorial integrity of Russia and help the need and can of our compatriots to decide on their future independently, and the aggressive coverage of some Western elites, who’re doing their utmost to protect their domination and with this purpose in view are attempting to dam and suppress any sovereign and unbiased growth facilities as a way to proceed to aggressively drive their will and pseudo-values on different nations and nations.
The aim of that a part of the West is to weaken, divide and in the end destroy our nation. They’re saying overtly now that in 1991 they managed to separate up the Soviet Union and now’s the time to do the identical to Russia, which have to be divided into quite a few areas that may be at lethal feud with one another.
They devised these plans way back. They inspired teams of worldwide terrorists within the Caucasus and moved NATO’s offensive infrastructure near our borders. They used indiscriminate Russophobia as a weapon, together with by nurturing the hatred of Russia for many years, primarily in Ukraine, which was designed to turn into an anti-Russia bridgehead. They turned the Ukrainian folks into cannon fodder and pushed them right into a conflict with Russia, which they unleashed again in 2014. They used the military towards civilians and arranged a genocide, blockade and terror towards those that refused to acknowledge the federal government that was created in Ukraine as the results of a state coup.
After the Kyiv regime publicly refused to settle the difficulty of Donbas peacefully and went so far as to announce its ambition to own nuclear weapons, it turned clear {that a} new offensive in Donbas — there have been two of them earlier than — was inevitable, and that it might be inevitably adopted by an assault on Russia’s Crimea, that’s, on Russia.
On this connection, the choice to start out a preemptive army operation was essential and the one possibility. The primary aim of this operation, which is to liberate the entire of Donbas, stays unaltered.
The Luhansk Folks’s Republic has been liberated from the neo-Nazis virtually fully. Combating within the Donetsk Folks’s Republic continues. Over the earlier eight years, the Kyiv occupation regime created a deeply echeloned line of everlasting defenses. A head-on assault towards them would have led to heavy losses, which is why our models, in addition to the forces of the Donbas republics, are appearing competently and systematically, utilizing army gear and saving lives, transferring step-by-step to liberate Donbas, purge cities and cities of the neo-Nazis, and assist the folks whom the Kyiv regime become hostages and human shields.
As you already know, skilled army personnel serving underneath contract are participating within the particular army operation. Combating facet by facet with them are volunteer models — folks of various ethnicities, professions and ages who’re actual patriots. They answered the decision of their hearts to stand up in protection of Russia and Donbas.
On this connection, I’ve already issued directions for the Authorities and the Protection Ministry to find out the authorized standing of volunteers and personnel of the army models of the Donetsk and Luhansk folks’s republics. It have to be the identical because the standing of army professionals of the Russian military, together with materials, medical and social advantages. Particular consideration have to be given to organizing the provision of army and different gear for volunteer models and Donbas folks’s militia.
Whereas appearing to realize the primary targets of defending Donbas in accordance with the plans and choices of the Protection Ministry and the Basic Employees, our troops have liberated appreciable areas within the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia areas and a lot of different areas. This has created a protracted line of contact that’s over 1,000 kilometers lengthy.
That is what I want to make public for the primary time immediately. After the beginning of the particular army operation, specifically after the Istanbul talks, Kyiv representatives voiced fairly a optimistic response to our proposals. These proposals involved above all guaranteeing Russia’s safety and pursuits. However a peaceable settlement clearly didn’t go well with the West, which is why, after sure compromises have been coordinated, Kyiv was truly ordered to wreck all these agreements.
Extra weapons have been pumped into Ukraine. The Kyiv regime introduced into play new teams of overseas mercenaries and nationalists, army models educated in line with NATO requirements and receiving orders from Western advisers.
On the identical time, the regime of reprisals all through Ukraine towards their very own residents, established instantly after the armed coup in 2014, was harshly intensified. The coverage of intimidation, terror and violence is taking over more and more mass-scale, horrific and barbaric kinds.
I need to stress the next. We all know that almost all of individuals residing within the territories liberated from the neo-Nazis, and these are primarily the historic lands of Novorossiya, don’t need to dwell underneath the yoke of the neo-Nazi regime. Folks within the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson areas, in Luhansk and Donetsk noticed and are seeing now the atrocities perpetrated by the neo-Nazis within the [Ukrainian-] occupied areas of the Kharkov area. The descendants of Banderites and members of Nazi punitive expeditions are killing, torturing and imprisoning folks; they’re settling scores, beating up and committing outrages on peaceable civilians.
There have been over 7.5 million folks residing within the Donetsk and Luhansk folks’s republics and within the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson areas earlier than the outbreak of hostilities. A lot of them have been compelled to turn into refugees and go away their houses. Those that have stayed — they quantity about 5 million — are actually uncovered to artillery and missile assaults launched by the neo-Nazi militants, who fireplace at hospitals and faculties and stage terrorist assaults towards peaceable civilians.
We can’t, now we have no ethical proper to let our kin and kith be torn to items by butchers; we can’t however reply to their honest striving to resolve their future on their very own.
The parliaments of the Donbas folks’s republics and the military-civilian administrations of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia areas have adopted choices to carry referendums on the way forward for their territories and have appealed to Russia to help this.
I want to emphasize that we’ll do every thing essential to create protected circumstances for these referendums so that folks can specific their will. And we are going to help the selection of future made by the vast majority of folks within the Donetsk and Luhansk folks’s republics and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson areas.
At the moment our armed forces, as I’ve talked about, are preventing on the road of contact that’s over 1,000 kilometers lengthy, preventing not solely towards neo-Nazi models however truly the whole army machine of the collective West.
On this state of affairs, I take into account it essential to take the next choice, which is totally enough to the threats we face. Extra exactly, I discover it essential to help the proposal of the Protection Ministry and the Basic Employees on partial mobilization within the Russian Federation to defend our Motherland and its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to make sure the security of our folks and folks within the liberated territories.
As I’ve mentioned, we’re speaking about partial mobilization. In different phrases, solely army reservists, primarily those that served within the armed forces and have particular army occupational specialties and corresponding expertise, will probably be known as up.
Earlier than being despatched to their models, these known as up for lively responsibility will bear necessary further army coaching based mostly on the expertise of the particular army operation.
I’ve already signed govt order on partial mobilization.
In accordance with laws, the homes of the Federal Meeting — the Federation Council and the State Duma — will probably be formally notified about this in writing immediately.
The mobilization will start immediately, September 21. I’m instructing the heads of the areas to supply the mandatory help to the work of army recruitment places of work.
I want to level out that the residents of Russia known as up in accordance with the mobilization order may have the standing, funds and all social advantages of army personnel serving underneath contract.
Moreover, the manager order on partial mobilization additionally stipulates further measures for the success of the state protection order. The heads of protection trade enterprises will probably be instantly answerable for attaining the targets of accelerating the manufacturing of weapons and army gear and utilizing further manufacturing amenities for this goal. On the identical time, the federal government should deal with with none delay all points of fabric, useful resource and monetary help for our protection enterprises.
The West has gone too far in its aggressive anti-Russia coverage, making infinite threats to our nation and folks. Some irresponsible Western politicians are doing extra than simply talk about their plans to arrange the supply of long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine, which might be used to ship strikes at Crimea and different Russian areas.
Such terrorist assaults, together with with using Western weapons, are being delivered at border areas within the Belgorod and Kursk areas. NATO is conducting reconnaissance by way of Russia’s southern areas in actual time and with using fashionable programs, plane, vessels, satellites and strategic drones.
Washington, London and Brussels are overtly encouraging Kyiv to maneuver the hostilities to our territory. They freely say that Russia have to be defeated on the battlefield by any means, and subsequently disadvantaged of political, financial, cultural and some other sovereignty and ransacked.
They’ve even resorted to the nuclear blackmail. I’m referring not solely to the Western-encouraged shelling of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Energy Plant, which poses a menace of a nuclear catastrophe, but in addition to the statements made by some high-ranking representatives of the main NATO nations on the likelihood and admissibility of utilizing weapons of mass destruction — nuclear weapons — towards Russia.
I want to remind those that make such statements relating to Russia that our nation has several types of weapons as effectively, and a few of them are extra fashionable than the weapons NATO nations have. Within the occasion of a menace to the territorial integrity of our nation and to defend Russia and our folks, we will definitely make use of all weapon programs accessible to us. This isn’t a bluff.
The residents of Russia can relaxation assured that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will probably be defended — I repeat — by all of the programs accessible to us. Those that are utilizing nuclear blackmail towards us ought to know that the wind rose can flip round.
It’s our historic custom and the future of our nation to cease those that are eager on world domination and threaten to separate up and enslave our Motherland. Relaxation assured that we’ll do it this time as effectively.
I imagine in your help.
