Ukrainian forces were the “first” to target civilian infrastructure, a swaying Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Thursday while drinking sparkling wine, a video of which has since gone viral.
“There’s a lot of noise right now about our strikes against the energy infrastructure of the neighboring country,” Putin said of Ukraine during a state awards ceremony to hand out honors including the “Hero of Russia” medal.
“Yes, we are doing it, but who started it? Who struck the Crimean bridge?” he added while rocking from side to side, referring to a blast in October, for which Ukraine never claimed responsibility.
He said an “informational confrontation” would not “prevent us from completing military objectives.”
The video of his remarks, which had been viewed more than 600,000 times as of Thursday evening, prompted some on social media to speculate that Putin appeared drunk. This behavior is unusual as Putin has a reputation for controlled abstinence — a point noted by Swedish economist Anders Åslund, who served as an adviser to the Russian and Ukrainian governments in the 1990s.
“This is the first time that I have seen Putin seeming drunk in any context,” Åslund tweeted. “He talks nonsense as usual, but he seems to realize that he is a loser. Very interesting & promising. All Russians will see that he is drunk & weak.”
Russian missiles have been targeting critical Ukrainian energy infrastructure for weeks, prompting Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accuse Moscow of turning winter “into a weapon of mass destruction” in November.
During a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz last week, Putin said the strikes were “inevitable” given Kyiv’s “provocative attacks on Russia’s civilian infrastructure,” according to the Ukrainian English-language newspaper Kyiv Post.
Victor Jack contributed reporting.
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