“We know what to do, how to do it and at what cost” – Vladimir Putin says at a mass rally that Russia will be victorious in Ukraine

Russian President Wladimir Putin used a rally in front of a crowded football stadium today to justify the invasion Ukraineand promised tens of thousands of people waving Russian flags that all of the Kremlin’s goals would be achieved.

We know what to do, how to do it and at what cost. And we will absolutely implement all our plans,” Putin said at a rally in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium.

He said the soldiers who fought in Ukraine in what Russia dubbed a “military special operation” exemplified Russia’s unity.

“Shoulder to shoulder, they help each other, support each other and protect each other with their bodies when needed like brothers from bullets. We haven’t had such unity for a long time,” he said.

As Putin spoke, state television briefly interrupted his speech and showed pre-recorded footage of patriotic songs, but the Kremlin chief later reappeared on state television.

The RIA news agency quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying that a technical error on a server was the reason why state television suddenly parted ways with Putin.

Putin says the operation in Ukraine was necessary because the United States was using the country to threaten Russia and Russia needed to defend itself against Ukraine’s “genocide” of Russian speakers.

Ukraine says it is fighting for its existence and that Putin’s claims of genocide are nonsense. The West says claims it wants to tear Russia apart are fiction.

The stage on which Putin spoke was decorated with the slogans “For a world without Nazism” and “For our President”, using the “Z” marks used in the military operation in Ukraine.

Before Putin spoke, Russia’s rousing national anthem with the words “Russia is our holy state” blared across the stands of the stadium used at the 2018 Fifa World Cup, along with more modern pop hits like “Made in the USSR”.

Pan-Slavic poems by Fyodor Tyuchev, whose verses warned the Russians that they would always be considered slaves of the Enlightenment by Europeans, were read.