'Strong, Stable World Order Impossible Without a Sovereign Russia': Putin
Putin made the comments in an address before the World Russian People's Council, an international public organization and forum headed up by Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill.
Russia is at the forefront of the effort to build a more fair, stable world order, and the latter's creation will be impossible without sovereignty, President Vladimir Putin has said.
"I would like to emphasize that without a sovereign, strong Russia, no lasting, stable world order is possible," Putin said in a video address before the World Russian People's Council on Tuesday.
"It is our country specifically that is at the forefront of creating a more equitable world order," Putin said. "As has happened more than once in history, it has fallen to our country today, to the Russian World, to block the path of those who claim world domination and 'exceptionalism'. We are fighting for the freedom of not only Russia, but the entire world."
"Today, Russophobia and other forms of racism and neo-Nazism have become practically the official ideology of Western ruling elites," Putin said. "They are directed not only against ethnic Russians, but also against all the peoples of Russia - Tatars, Chechens, Avars, Tuvinians, Bashkirs, Buryats, Yakuts, Ossetians, Jews, the Ingush, the Mari, and the Altai people. There are many of us, I won't name everyone now, but I will repeat that this is directed against all the peoples of Russia."
"The West, in principle, does not need such a large and multinational country as Russia. Our diversity and unity of cultures, traditions, languages and ethnic groups simply does not fit the logic of Western racists and colonialists, their cruel system of total depersonalization, dissociation, suppression and exploitation. It is for this reason that they've started playing their old tune about Russia being a 'prison of nations', about Russians themselves being a slavish nation. We have heard this many times over the centuries," he said.
Pointing to the failure of the West's sanctions "blitzkrieg," Putin stressed that Russia's adversaries have often sought to "dismember and plunder Russia, if not by force, then through chaos."
"We have become stronger. Our historic regions have returned to Russia. Society is abandoning the superficial and turning to its true, authentic values," Putin suggested.
Sovereignty is a precondition for true freedom, for Russia, its people and each individual, Putin said. "Because in our tradition, a person cannot feel free if his loved ones, children and homeland are not free. And it is precisely this true freedom that our boys, men, soldiers officers and daughters of the fatherland are now defending. A free people who understand their responsibility for today and for future generations."
Russia, without any exaggeration, is engaged in a struggle for "national liberation," Putin said, suggesting that the country is "defending the safety and well-being of our people, the highest historical right to be Russia - a strong, independent power, a nation civilization."
