An enormous crowd of Russians cheered during a concert to mark the first anniversary of the Ukraine war after the Kremlin "forced" them to go.
Vladimir Putin stepped out onto the stage of a sports arena in Moscow today, as he told the audience Russia's soldiers are fighting to capture "historic frontiers", which will protect their "interested, people, culture, language and territory".
"When we stand together we have no equals", he shouted to the crowd, who looked enthusiastic with the camera on them.
But away from the arena, state government employees told how they were forced to attend the president's event, while university students claimed they were offered the day off to watch the concert.
The rally comes a year after the tyrant stepped out on the same stage draped in a £10,000 Loro Piana jacket to explain his reasons for going to war.
Today, the president shouted at the crowd to rally them up, urging the audience to support Russia's armed forces currently waging his war in Ukraine.
The crowd cheered as he said: "We are proud of those who are fighting in Ukraine to defend the Fatherland."
But according to internal correspondence seen by the Moscow Times, employees at a government building in the capital said 70 per cent of them had been forced to attend.
At one point, they invited a group of children on-stage as they claimed the youngsters had been saved from Mariupol by a soldier hailed as a hero in Russia.
They claimed the fighter, who goes by the callsign of Angel Yuri Gagarin, "saved" more than 360 children from the city, which Russia decimated with aerial attacks.
Yesterday, Putin spoke in front of a more engrossed crowd as he babbled on for hours about the state of the war, paedophiles, and one of his favourite topics WW2.
The most-worrying threat made during the rambling speech was about the looming threat of a "global conflict".
He offered no hope of an end to the Ukraine war, which is approaching its one year anniversary.
But as he blamed the West for "starting the war", he gave his own personal rendition of recent history and made a series of deranged statements.
He also frequently justified his invasion of his neighbour by accusing Western countries of threatening Russia: “It’s they who have started the war. And we are using force to end it."
In his first direct warning, he said: “The more long-range Western systems are being delivered to Ukraine, the farther we will be forced to move the threat from our borders.”
He also used language which indicated a defeat in Ukraine would justify the use of nuclear weapons.
Shortly after the speech ended, it was announced that Russia would be withdrawing from the US-Russian nuclear arms control treaty.
While meeting with NATO leaders today, President Joe Biden said the warlord had made a "big mistake.
The U.S. president was in Poland to reassure eastern flank NATO allies that the U.S. will remain by their sides amid the grinding Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In his first comments since Putin's announcement Tuesday, Biden condemned the Russian decision to pull back from the treaty, known as New START.
The move is expected to have an immediate impact on US visibility into Russian nuclear activities, but the pact was already on life support following Moscow's cancellation late last year of talks that had been intended to salvage an agreement that both sides have accused the other of violating.
"It's a big mistake," Biden said.
The president's comments came as he was wrapping up a whirlwind, four-day visit to Poland and Ukraine with talks with leaders from the Bucharest Nine, a collection of nations in the most eastern parts of the NATO alliance that came together in response to Putin's 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
As the war in Ukraine drags on, the Bucharest Nine countries' anxieties have remained heightened. Many worry Putin could move to take military action against them next if he's successful in Ukraine. The alliance includes Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
"You're the frontlines of our collective defense," Biden said Wednesday of the group. "And you know, better than anyone, what's at stake in this conflict? Not just for Ukraine, but for the freedom of democracies throughout Europe and around the world."
He pledged that NATO's mutual-defense pact is "sacred" and that "we will defend literally every inch of NATO."
