Here’s what experts heard in Vladimir Putin’s speech about ‘cleansing’ Russia of ‘traitors’

A venomous speech by Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that included talk of “cleansing” Russia of “scum and traitors” marked an escalation in his rhetoric that is being seen by some as a sign of his frustration with the invasion of Ukraine.

In a speech to government ministers, the Russian president sent a sinister warning to those in his own country questioning the war — saying they were being used by the West.

“The collective West is trying to split our society… to provoke a civil confrontation in Russia,” Putin said in his speech. “And the goal is… the destruction of Russia.”

“The Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors and simply spit them out like a fly that accidentally flew into the mouth.

“I am convinced that such a natural and necessary cleansing of society will only strengthen our country.”

That kind of speech, observers say, is a sign that Putin plans to crack down even more severely on those who disagree with him.

“Putin is acutely aware that calls for peace and criticism of the war… could quickly turn into explicit criticism of him as president,” said Ben Noble, associate professor of Russian politics at University College London in an email.

“There is an existential urgency, therefore, to his rhetoric framing critics as traitors.”

There has been rising anti-war sentiment in Russia, adding to Moscow’s potential frustration about an invasion that isn’t going as well as initially envisioned, and that the West has been so united in the levying of sanctions.

Recent legislation passed in Russia in early March allows for a jail sentence of as long as 15 years in prison for those who spread “knowingly false information” about the military or about Russian actions in Ukraine. Since the invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24, thousands of anti-war protesters have been detained and several independent media organizations have been forced to suspend their operations.

“Russia appears to be shifting to a mode of governance that relies on fear and repression rather than managing criticism and dissent through softer means,” said Noble.

Some of the phrasing — “collective West,” “undermine Russia,” and “foreign agents” — is familiar ground for the Russian president, but other parts of that speech represent an intensification in tone and apparent ire, said Noble: “References to ‘scum and traitors’ convey Putin’s direct, emotional, visceral engagement with voices questioning the Russian military’s activities in Ukraine.”

Just as alarming, Putin’s speech opens a window into some of the darkest corners of Russia’s past. What his language of him sounds like to Maria Popova is a return to the earliest days of the Soviet Union, an indicator of intensifying domestic repression.

“It’s shocking in its content, but it’s not surprising that Putin has escalated to this point. He has been going in this direction for the last eight years,” said Popova, associate professor of political science at McGill University.

“To me, as a scholar of Russian politics, what’s more striking is the return to this anti-Western paranoia about the West cultivating internal enemies who are going to threaten the nation. This is Stalinism, basically.”

The people who Putin thinks of as traitors, said Popova, are those — like Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny — who think like the West, who speak about freedom and democracy and control of corruption.

The Ukrainian government, she said, is the quintessential representative of those traitors to Putin.

“The Ukrainian government thinks like the West, wants to integrate with the West. It wants to go in a pro-European direction. It has competitive elections; it has freedom of speech,” she said.

“These are all things that to Putin are despicable.”

Notably, she pointed out, the Russian oligarchs who spend millions of dollars on luxury yachts, homes and football teams in the West are exempt from his definitions of “scum and traitors” — he sees them as loyal to Russia, but just using the West for its luxury.

While Putin portrays the West as the root cause of the dissent against his rule within Russia, the message in this latest speech — in Russian, after all — appears to be clearly directed internally.

While media in the West provide wall-to-wall coverage of Russian shells destroying Ukrainian hospitals and theaters sheltering civilians, Putin’s message, said Popova, is clearly about controlling the narrative within Russia about the war and nipping any potential anti-war movements in the bud.

“It is alarming because it is escalating quickly into very extremist speech,” she said. “Even though, in the last eight years, the roots of this were there.”

“This is very explicit and very threatening.”