Munich speech of Vladimir Putin

The 2007 Munich speech was given by Russian president Vladimir Putin in Germany on 10 February 2007 at the Munich Security Conference. The speech expressed significant points of future politics of Russia driven by Putin.

Synopsis

Putin criticized what he called the United States' monopolistic dominance in global relations, and its "almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations". The speech came to be known, especially in Russia, as the Munich speech. He said the result of such dominance was that,

Putin quoted a 1990 speech by Manfred Wörner to support his position that NATO promised not to expand into new countries in Eastern Europe:

Putin publicly opposed plans for the U.S. missile shield in Europe, and presented President George W. Bush with a counter proposal on 7 June 2007 which was declined. Russia suspended its participation in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe on 11 December 2007 because:

Response

In response, former NATO secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer called it, "disappointing and not helpful." The months following the Munich speech were marked by tension and a surge in rhetoric on both sides of the Atlantic, though both Russian and American officials, however, denied the idea of a new Cold War.

The Polish Institute of International Affairs has described Putin's quotation from Manfred Wörner's speech as lacking appropriate context, stating that Wörner's speech "in fact, only concerned non-deployment of NATO forces on East German territory after reunification."

Follow-ups

Putin later made other speeches that were called follow-ups to the Munich speech. These include:

* The 2013 Valdai speech of Vladimir Putin in Sochi on 19 September 2013
* The Crimean speech of Vladimir Putin to the Federal Assembly of Russia on 18 March 2014
* The 2014 Valdai speech of Vladimir Putin in Sochi on 24 October 2014
* U. N. General Assembly speech in New York, 28 September 2015 (''"I'm urged to ask those who created this situation: do you at least realize now what you’ve done?"'')

See also

* Foreign policy of Vladimir Putin

References

Links

Video of the speech with English subtitles

Tenth Anniversary of Putin’s Munich Speech: A Commitment to Failure
— Jamestown Foundation, 2017

The Daily Vertical: 10 Years Ago Today, Putin Declared War (Transcript)
— RFERL, 2017

{{Vladimir Putin

2007 in Germany
2007 in Russia
2007 in international relations
2007 speeches
Events in Munich
February 2007 events in Europe
Russia–NATO relations
Speeches by Vladimir Putin
2000s in Munich