Constant escalation can lead to serious consequences. Have you heard him speak that profoundly and directly before about NATO countries? No, and I would like to take this back to something’s happened. He’s made three visits abroad since his election or re-election. The first was to Beijing, the second was to Belarus Minsk, and the third was to Tashkent, which is where he made the press conference that we’ve just shown. And I’d take it back a couple of weeks to his stay in Beijing. I think that his lengthy and very detailed discussions with Xi gave him additional confidence to proceed with the direct challenge to the United States-led NATO that we heard in his Tashkent meeting.

When I said that his time in Tashkent was successful, let’s bear in mind that the United States, with Blinken, has made trips through Central Asia in the hopes of dislodging Kazakhstan, dislodging Uzbekistan, these are the largest, most populous, and important Central Asian countries, from the Russian orbit. And there was a time, going back a year, when it looked like they were wobbling. The nature of the meeting that Putin had in three days, it was a day longer than was planned, in Tashkent, during which a number of very important commercial agreements were signed, including for the building of the first nuclear power station in Central Asia, a small one, but nonetheless the first one, which will be Russian-built.

This type of warm greeting, without any side glances to those who are giving the come hither note like Mr. Blinken, tells you that Central Asian countries are behaving as normal countries would. They go with winners, and they have sensed that Russia is the winner in the war with Ukraine and NATO. Wow. Profound. [tr:trw].

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