MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia had endured a “difficult year,” but he pledged that the country would pursue its independent foreign policy and economic objectives despite dogged Western efforts to weaken it.
Putin used his annual state of the nation speech both to reaffirm the Kremlin’s intention to restore Russia’s great power status and to reassure the Russian people that he was addressing troubling economic developments.
On a dais in a vast white marble hall at the Kremlin filled with the country’s political elite, Putin called Crimea the country’s Temple Mount and said that its annexation from …read more
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
