Putin left no room for negotiation with the Biden administration. He is prepared for sanctions, which he says will come no matter what Russia does. He asserts that Western hostility is permanent (perhaps because it would be too painful to his ego to admit that most people in the West, if given the choice, would not think about Russia or its leaders at all).

In short, Putin is now embracing a Russian tradition of paranoia, an inferiority complex that sees Moscow as both a savior of other nations and a victim of great conspiracies, a drama in which Russia is both strong enough to be feared and weak enough to be threatened. The West, in this story, is motivated not to seek peace and security, but to undermine Russia, and Putin has cast himself as the beleaguered Russian prophet who must subvert the evil plans drawn against his people.

Back here on Earth, however, we have a more pressing problem. At the end of his speech, Putin recognized the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, the “people’s republics” of Lugansk and Donetsk, as independent entities. In so doing, Putin has effectively partitioned Ukraine. This specific form of meddling in sovereign nations, too, is a Soviet tradition, as the Poles and others would remind us. His claim to these areas—for they will be Russian satrapies, and not “independent” in any meaningful way—is a claim to be the ultimate arbiter of former Soviet borders, including those now within NATO.