Kremlin Ominous Words From An Isolated, Angry Putin

Sitting alone at a desk in a grand, columned Kremlin room, Vladimir Putin looked across an expanse of parquet floor at his security council and asked if anyone wished to express an alternative opinion.

- Shaun Walker

He was met with silence.

A few hours later, the Russian president appeared on state TV to give an angry, rambling lecture about Ukraine, a country that in Putin’s telling had become “a colony with a puppet regime”, and had no historical right to exist.

Putin’s double bill, which was immediately followed by the signing of an agreement on Russian recognition of the two proxy states in east Ukraine as independent entities, is likely to go down in history as one of the turning points in his 22-years-and-counting rule over Russia.

This was not a politician convening his team for discussions ; this was a supreme leader marshalling his minions and ensuring collective responsibility for a decision that, at minimum, will change the security architecture in Europe, and may well lead to a horrific war that consumes Ukraine.

Putin appeared genuinely angry and passionate in his speech, which he almost certainly wrote himself.