Free Republic

The Kremlin promised entertainment.Western analysts feared Vladimir Putin would declare another war.But the Russian president’s more than two-hour-long address on Thursday delivered on neither expectation, though Putin presented Russians with a vision of the future that alternated between nuclear saber-rattling and grand social promises. ###Putin, who cut a relaxed figure, also called for the safeguarding of “traditional family values.”“We see what is happening in some countries where moral norms and family institutions are deliberately being destroyed, pushing entire peoples to extinction and degeneration,” he said. “We choose life.”