US slams 'absurdity' of Putin's anti-West speech

WARSAW: A top United States official on Tuesday (Feb 21) described President Vladimir Putin's accusations that Russia had been threatened by the West as justification for invading Ukraine as "absurdity".

Putin made the claims in his annual state of the nation address, which came ahead of the first anniversary of Russia's offensive in Ukraine.

"Nobody is attacking Russia. There's a kind of absurdity in the notion that Russia was under some form of military threat from Ukraine or anyone else," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

Speaking hours ahead of President Joe Biden delivering his own speech in Warsaw to mark the anniversary of Putin launching the war, Sullivan said that the Kremlin leader was the aggressor.

"This was a war of choice. Putin chose to fight it. He could have chosen not to. And he can choose even now to end it, to go home," Sullivan said.

"Russia stops fighting the war in Ukraine and goes home, the war ends. Ukraine stops fighting and the United States and the coalition stops helping them fight - then Ukraine disappears from the map," he added.

Previewing Biden's speech, Sullivan said he would not "sketch out in any kind of specifics, a vision of a diplomatic end to the war".

Rather he will focus on the broader lesson of Ukraine in what he sees as an "inflection point" in a global struggle between democracies and autocratic regimes.

"So his remarks will speak specifically to the conflict in Ukraine, but of course, they will also speak to the larger contest at stake between those aggressors who are trying to destroy fundamental principles and those democracies who are pulling together to try to uphold it," he said.

Biden is due to deliver his own speech at about 4.30pm GMT following talks with Polish President Andrzej Duda, who has been a key advocate for support for Ukraine within the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and a day after a surprise visit to Kyiv.

"COMPLETELY DIFFERENT REALITY"

A senior aide to Ukraine's president, meanwhile, said that Putin's speech to Russia's political and military elite showed that he has lost touch with reality,

In his speech, Putin also said he would continue with Russia's year-long war in Ukraine and accused the US-led NATO alliance of fanning the flames of the conflict in the mistaken belief that it could defeat Moscow in a global confrontation.

"He is in a completely different reality, where there is no opportunity to conduct a dialogue about justice and international law," Mykhailo Podolyak, a political adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told Reuters.

"Russia is at a dead end. In the most desperate situation. Everything that Russia will do next will only worsen its situation."

Podolyak said Putin was demonstrating confusion and a lack of understanding of the situation, and that this would lead to more difficulties for Russia in the near future.

"This means that chaos both on the battlefield and inside Russia will grow," he said.

Throughout the war, Ukrainian officials have talked up the significance of internal divisions within Russia.