Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his annual state of the nation address, warning Russians of tough times ahead due to falling oil prices and Western economic sanctions imposed because of the Kremlin’s involvement in the crisis in neighboring Ukraine.

Before he spoke, Chechyan separatists and Russian police waged hours of gun battles across Grozny, leaving at least ten police and ten gunmen dead.  The battle left a ten-storey building housing local media offices gutted by a fire that spread to a market street.  Militants attempted to escape through schools, and it took 12 hours for police to hunt down the rest of the militants.  Gun battles were still raging as Putin spoke.

Putin’s rise to power was made with his ruthless crackdown on the Islamist insurgency in Chechnya.  It brought years of security at the cost of human rights abuses in the Russian autonomous republic between the Black and Caspian Seas.  The new attack is a reminder to Russians that the insurgency never actually went away.

Against that backdrop, Putin portrayed himself as the man to defend Russia against “efforts to dismember” it through economic sanctions.

“There is no doubt they would have loved to see the Yugoslavia scenario of collapse and dismemberment for us – with all the tragic consequences it would have for the peoples of Russia,” Putin said.  “This has not happened. We did not allow it.”

He said he would defy what he called Western attempts to draw a new Iron Curtain around Russia.  “We will never pursue the path of self-isolation, xenophobia, suspicion and search for enemies.  All this is a manifestation of weakness, while we are strong and self-confident.”

Putin also vowed never to abandon Crimea, which Russia annexed earlier this year after the Ukrainian revolution swapped a pro-Moscow government for a pro-Western set.  Invoking religious imagery, Putin compared Crimea to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, saying the peninsula held sacred importance for Russians because the Russian Orthodox Church was born there.

Indeed, Russian history begins in what we now call Ukraine.  Grand Prince Volodymyr Sviatoslavich the Great converted the Kievan Rus tribes to Christianity near the modern city of Sevastopol.