Russia appears to be gearing up for something, if Putin’s coded message to her soldiers is any guide:
Rather than engage with Zelensky’s proposals, Putin turned away from the letter entirely. He said the ones to be addressed were Russia’s combatants and soldiers at the line of contact, telling them:
The country is proud of you and places its hopes on you. We should address not the authors of this letter, nor lovers of the epistolary genre, but our fighters on the front line.
He then closed with the phrase: “Work, brothers!”
To understand the import of that phrase you need to be introduced to Magomed Nurbagandov:
Magomed Nurbagandovich Nurbagandov (January 9, 1985 – July 10, 2016) was a police lieutenant serving in the National Guard of Russia, stationed in Kaspiysk in the Republic of Dagestan. He was a Dargin by nationality, born in the village of Sergokala. By all accounts an exceptional student — he graduated from lyceum with a gold medal and then with honors from the law faculty of Dagestan State University.
On the morning of July 10, 2016, Nurbagandov was vacationing with his family near the village of Sergokala when he was attacked by five armed militants. Having learned he was a policeman, the militants forced him and his brother into the trunk of a stolen car, drove them away from the recreation area, and then shot them. The murder was filmed on a mobile phone and posted on an extremist website. Wikipedia
The militants’ goal was psychological — they wanted him to appear on camera and call on his fellow officers to quit the police and stop fighting. Instead, looking directly at the camera, Nurbagandov urged: “Keep on working, brothers” (Работайте, братья) — an act which took tremendous courage.
The militants had uploaded an edited version of the video where they cut out Nurbagandov’s last words. His defiance was suppressed — until fate intervened. Several militants from the group were killed in September 2016, and when examining the bodies, the mobile phone that had filmed the original, unedited video was found. The full footage — with his final words intact — was then released by Russian authorities. The phrase went viral on September 12, 2016, and became a nationwide sensation.
By invoking it in front of the international audience at SPIEF, Putin was making a layered statement: that Zelensky’s letter was an enemy propaganda exercise, that it deserved to be treated with the same contempt Nurbagandov showed his captors, and that the only people worth addressing are those doing the actual fighting. Putin’s visage was grim when he spoke this phrase.
Now the limits of the US military have been clearly established, it makes sense that Russia no longer feels the need to maintain the holding pattern it has been in for the last three years. And unlike his people, who are primarily focused on Ukraine, and to a lesser extent the European Union, Putin understands that their real enemy is Clown World.