Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an impassioned call for solidarity between the diverse peoples of the country on Tuesday. Addressing a plenary session of the International Russian People’s Council, Putin warned of Western attempts to sow division in the country and attempts to break its territory up along ethnic lines.
Such efforts are aimed not only at harming the Russian people themselves but against all the groups who make up the country, Putin declared.
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‘Russophobia and other forms of racism and neo-Nazism have become almost the official ideology of the Western ruling elites. They are directed not only against the Russians, but against all the peoples of Russia: Tatars, Chechens, Avars, Tuvinians, Bashkirs, Buryats, Yakuts, Ossetians, Jews, Ingush, Mari, Altaians. There are many of us, I won’t name them all now, but, I repeat, this is directed against all the peoples of Russia,’ the President stated.
“The West does not need such a big and multinational country like Russia,” the president continued, adding that Russia’s diversity and unity “simply doesn’t fit in with the logic of Western racists and colonizers.”
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That’s why, according to Putin, the West has started playing “the old tune” of calling Russia a “prison of nations,” describing the Russian people as “slaves” and even going as far as to call for the “decolonization” of Russia.
“We’ve heard this all before,” he said, adding that what the opponents of Russia really want is to dismember and plunder the country, if not by force, then by sowing discord within its borders.
Putin went on to warn that any outside interference or provocations aimed at causing ethnic or religious conflicts in the country would be regarded as an “aggressive act” and an attempt to once again use terrorism and extremism as a tool to fight Russia.
“We will react accordingly,” he declared.
The president stressed that Russia’s current fight for sovereignty and justice is “without exaggeration” of a “national liberation nature” because it a fight for the security and the wellbeing of its citizens.
Putin also noted that the Russian people, as they have already done in the past, have once again become a roadblock for those who are striving for global domination and are trying to push forward their “exceptionalism.”
“We are fighting today not only for the freedom of Russia, but for the freedom of the whole world,” the president said, stating that Moscow is now “at the forefront of creating a more equitable world order” and that “without a sovereign, strong Russia, no lasting, stable world order is possible.”