President Vladimir Putin’s annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly (parliament), delivered last Wednesday, April 21, following a long delay, was anticipated to present a whole host of major surprises; but the speech turned out to be surprising only for its extraordinarily low content. Many local commentators mused that the firmly entrenched leader seemingly has nothing left to say to Russia’s disillusioned society. Despite the need to devote greater attention to the country’s social and economic problems, Russian economists were disappointed with the lack of a meaningful plan for stimulating a recovery, and they pointed to the actual meagerness of the announced financial “gifts” to domestic businesses and the suffering population. Putin showed scant interest in reading out the superfluous instructions to the state bureaucracy for how it must deal with the various mundane issues that continue to accumulate in many sectors and regions. Moreover, his praise for Russia’s achievements in countering the COVID-19 pandemic rang hollow considering that the pace of vaccination remains slow and estimates of excess mortality continue to be shockingly high. As such, perhaps the most illustrative aspect of the Russian president’s national address was its deliberate omissions of the most demanding problems.
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Pavel Baev: Putin leaves much unsaid in speech to parliament
In this handout photograph released by The Russian Presidential Press Service, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his annual state of the nation address at The Federal Assembly at The Manezh Exhibition Hall in Moscow on April 21, 2021.
