The Rhetorical Analysis Of Putin's Crimea Speech

Alciete Harless

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The speech given by the Russian President, Vlladimir Putin, from the Kremlin in Moscow on the 18th of March in 2014 is now referred to as “Putin 's Crimea Speech”. In the speech Putin gives his justification for the annexation of Crimea from Ukrainian control to that of the Russian Federation. The named target audience was Federation Council members, State Duma deputies, citizens of Russia, residents of Crimea and Sevastopol, the United States and European countries. Though the named audience was included in his target audience, it is the unnamed audience for which the greater part of President Putin 's rhetoric was aimed. President Putin made a clear statement that this is an internal issue that does not

This is further cemented when he addresses them all in the opening be referring to them as friends of his, he stated “Dear friends, we have gathered here today in connection with an issue that is of vital, historic significance to all of us.” This again affirms that it is their problem and no one else should be involved or concerned. However, when he says “A referendum was held in Crimea on March 16 in full compliance with democratic procedures and international norms.” He is addressing the world at large simply by using the phrase “international norms” while appealing to western ideals by referring to the democratic processes by which Crimean citizens had chose to leave Ukraine. A counter example that could be given for an American to truly relate to this would be if Texas wanted to go back to Mexican control and voted to do so and then the Mexican government brought in their military to enforce that decision. President Putin then gives more legitimacy by stating that “more than 82 percent of the electorate took part in the vote.” and of those 96 percent were in

One could say “my ancestors were of a tribe which lived here ten thousand years ago and should therefore be under the control of those peoples. In other words is a statute of limitations that should be rationally taken into account? The answer to that question is for others to decide, but the rhetoric used by President Putin is compelling to his audiences. The injustice to the people of Crimea, implies President Putin, was made more shocking by the abruptness of the changes where, as he says, “Millions of people went to bed in one country and awoke in different ones, overnight becoming ethnic minorities in former Union republics, while the Russian nation became one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders”. We can all imagine the shock that one must face if we too were to wake up one day and another country was in control of our fates and that we were in a new minority class. It is such an appeal which he was intending in his