Vladimir Putin¡¯s menacing televised address Wednesday was much more than a bid to change the course of his faltering war against Ukraine. It attempted to invert a war of aggression against a neighbor into one of defense of a threatened ¡°motherland,¡± a theme that resonates with Russians steeped in patriotic history.
Putin, Russia¡¯s president, aimed at nothing less than altering the meaning of the war for his country, raising the stakes for the entire world. He warned the West in unmistakable terms ¡ª ¡°this is not a bluff¡± ¡ª that the attempt to weaken or defeat Russia could provoke nuclear cataclysm.
Rattling his nuclear saber, accusing the West of seeking to ¡°destroy¡± his country and ordering the call-up of 300,000 military reservists, Putin implicitly conceded that the war he started Feb. 24 has not gone as he wished. He painted the Ukrainians as mere pawns of the ¡°military machine of the collective West.¡±
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