There was a pretty interesting
interview recently with
Nikolai Patrushev (Russian politician, security officer and intelligence officer who has served as the secretary of the
Security Council of Russia since 2008. He previously served as the director of the
Federal Security Service (FSB) from 1999 to 2008.). Here is Deepl translation:
What is the West trying to achieve?
Gleb Ivanov, AiF.ru: - Nikolai Platonovich, the US and other Western states are openly demonising Russia, turning to direct insults. What is the reason for this?
Nikolai Patrushev:
The style of the Anglo-Saxons has not changed over the centuries. So today, they continue to dictate their terms to the world, rudely flouting the sovereign rights of the states. Covering up their actions with words about struggle for human rights, freedom and democracy, in fact, they realize the doctrine of "golden billion", supposing that limited number of people can prosper in this world. The lot of the rest, as they see it, is to bend over backwards in the name of their goal.
To increase the wealth of a bunch of tycoons in the City of London and Wall Street, the big capital-controlled US and British governments are creating an economic crisis in the world, starving millions of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America by restricting their access to grain, fertilizer and energy resources. By their actions, they provoke unemployment and a migration catastrophe in Europe. Uninterested in the prosperity of European states, they do everything to make them disappear from the pedestal of economically developed countries. And for unconditional control of the region, they put Europeans on a chair with two legs called NATO and the EU, watching them balancing disdainfully.
- Today, it is increasingly said that Western pharmaceutical companies have a vested interest in the spread of dangerous diseases and in humanity's daily dependence on drugs...
-
Some experts are expressing the view that the coronavirus infection is man-made, suggesting that it may have been created in Pentagon laboratories with the assistance of a number of major multinational pharmaceutical companies. The Clintons, Rockefellers, Soros and Biden foundations were involved in this work under state guarantees. Instead of care of health of mankind Washington spends billions on research of new pathogens. Moreover, western medicine increasingly practices genetic engineering and synthetic biology methods, thus blurring the line between artificial and natural.
- In Washington they nurture plans to recognize Russia as the country-terrorist, some countries like Lithuania already officially assign such status to Russia ...
- As the saying goes, a thief's hat is on fire. Today it is easier to tell which of the largest international terrorist organizations has not arisen with the American assistance. The USA widely uses them as the tool of geopolitical confrontation, including with our country. Back in the mid-1980s, Al Qaeda (banned in the Russian Federation) was created under the control of U.S. intelligence agencies to counter the Soviet Union on Afghan soil. In the 1990s, the United States created the Taliban (banned in the Russian Federation) to exert influence in Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Guided by its alleged "national interests," the U.S. has been using force to topple unwanted regimes in Libya and Iraq, and has tried to do so in Syria. And the main striking force in all cases are radical groups, whose further association has led to creation of a terrorist monster called the Islamic State (banned in the Russian Federation), which, after Al Qaeda and the Taliban movement, has got out of the Americans' control.
It is also known about Washington's warm relations with neo-Nazi thugs in Ukraine.
What does denazification mean?
- There is still debate about neo-Nazis in Ukraine. In the West they say with one voice that they are not there. President Biden, asking Congress for billions of dollars to supply arms to Ukraine, calls that country the front line of the fight for freedom...
- The Westerners will probably not take off their rose-coloured glasses until the rampaging Ukrainian youths start rampaging in their streets. Not only in Europe, by the way. Remember the recent shooting in American Buffalo.
I should like to ask Americans what the difference is between a neo-Nazi shooting people in a supermarket and the Azov (banned in the Russian Federation) militants, who every day, year after year, humiliated and destroyed the civilian population of Donbas.
- What, after all, is meant by denazification? There has been a lot of talk about it in recent months, but not everyone understands the term.
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Everything becomes clear if you remember history. During the Potsdam conference, the USSR, the US and England signed an agreement to eradicate German militarism and Nazism.
By denazification a number of measures were meant. Apart from punishing Nazi criminals, the laws of the Third Reich legalising discrimination on the basis of race, nationality, language, religion and political opinion were abolished. Nazi and militaristic doctrines were removed from school education.
Our country had set such goals in 1945 and we are setting them now, when we are freeing Ukraine from neo-Nazism. However, at that time England and the USA were together with us. Today, these countries have taken a different stance, supporting Nazism and acting aggressively against most of the world.
What will happen to Ukraine?
- Some of our readers sometimes express concern about, as they write, "the delaying of the special operation in Ukraine".
-
We are not chasing deadlines. Nazism must either be eradicated 100% or it will raise its head in a few years, and in an even uglier form.
- How do you assess the chances of a successful conclusion of the special operation?
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All the objectives set by the president of Russia will be fulfilled. It cannot be otherwise, because the truth, including historical truth, is on our side. It is not for nothing that General Skobelev once said that
only our country can afford the luxury of fighting out of compassion. Compassion, justice, dignity - these are powerful unifying ideas, which we have always put and will continue to put at the forefront.
- And what fate awaits Ukraine? Will it survive as a state?
- The destiny of Ukraine will be determined by the people living on its territory. I would like to remind you that our country has never been in charge of the destiny of sovereign states. On the contrary, we helped them to protect their statehood.
We supported the United States during their civil war. France has been assisted on numerous occasions. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, we prevented its humiliation, and in World War I, we saved Paris twice. It was the USSR that prevented the British and Americans in 1945 from dismembering Germany into a multitude of states. Moscow's decisive role in the unification of Germany, to which the French and the British were the most opposed, is also well known. Russia has played no less important role in the history of Polish statehood. At the same time, today the West is in every way possible obscuring our country's contribution to the preservation of other states.
- By the way, Finland, which now wants to join NATO, was also shaped as a state within the Russian Empire?
- You are right. Moreover,
Finland came out of the Second World War, despite taking part in it on the side of Germany, with minimal damage for itself thanks to Moscow's position. Now, Finland, together with Sweden, has been persuaded to join NATO, allegedly for their own safety. Turkey and Croatia, however, object, but I think Helsinki and Stockholm will be accepted into the bloc anyway, because Washington and its controlled Brussels have decided so. The will of other nations does not interest the US leadership, although I believe many of the inhabitants of these countries understand the gamble they are being pushed into.
NATO is not a defensive but a purely aggressive offensive military bloc; joining it means automatically surrendering a large part of its sovereignty to Washington. Should the alliance expand its military infrastructure in Finland and Sweden, Russia will see this as a direct threat to its own security and is obliged to respond.
- The NATO is persistently nodding to the Finns and the Swedes to Ukraine...
- Only the logic here is the opposite. It is the actual NATO leadership of the Kiev authorities that has led to a disastrous scenario. If Ukraine had remained independent, instead of being governed by the current puppet regime obsessed with joining NATO and the EU, it would have long ago expelled all the Nazi scum from its land. Meanwhile, the ideal scenario for the whole North Atlantic Alliance, led by the United States, seems to be an endlessly smouldering conflict in this country. Ukraine is needed by the West as a counterweight to Russia and also as a test site for the disposal of obsolete weapons. By fuelling hostilities, the US is pumping money into its defence-industrial complex, again, as in the wars of the 20th century, remaining a winner. At the same time, the U.S. considers citizens of Ukraine as expendable material, which has no place in the "golden billion".
Forgotten history
- Speaking of billions. Zelensky declares that Russia should pay Ukraine reparations...
- It is Russia that has the right to demand reparations from the countries that sponsored the Nazis in Ukraine and the criminal Kiev regime. The DNR and LNR should demand reparation for all material damage from them for 8 years of aggression. And the Ukrainian people themselves deserve reparations from the main instigators of the conflict, i.e. the US and England, who are forcing the Ukrainians to fight, supporting the neo-Nazis, supplying them with weapons, sending their military advisers and mercenaries.
Unfortunately, many Ukrainians still believe what they are told by the West and the Kiev regime. Sobering up sooner or later will come. They have yet to open their eyes and see that the country actually does not exist, that the gene pool of the people and their cultural memory are being destroyed by the Westerners and replaced by rabid gender concepts and empty liberal values.
- Oblivion of history and rejection of their values is apparently a misfortune for Ukrainians, not only?
- Of course it is. Last year I visited the Great Patriotic War Museum in Minsk. The guide shared with me the impressions of a group of students from the United States, who throughout the tour doubted whether they were being told the truth, because they naively believed that it was America who had defeated Nazi Germany.
Unfortunately, this false version of fateful events is also held by some school teachers in our country. Many textbooks also distort the facts. Little time is given to the subject of heroism of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War in the history lessons, and it is often described superficially in the textbooks. As a result, only a few seniors can name the names of those, who gained the victory in 1945, at the cost of their own lives, and almost nobody has ever heard about the heroes of the WWI or the Patriotic War of 1812.
A battle for memory
- What do you see as the cause?
- First and foremost we need to look at the training of teachers. It's a good time to remember the ideas of Ushinsky and Makarenko, that the teacher forms the personality of the student, and his vocation should not be to provide services, but to enlighten, educate and educate. Professional universities should train future teachers as masters of excellence, not stamping them on an assembly line.
Teachers occupy a special place in the life of every citizen, so the arbitrary interpretation of global and national history by individual teachers is unacceptable, undermining the authority of our country and programming the minds of children on the basis of false facts and myths. Psychological manipulation of young people, the gap between generations, the distortion of historical truth - all this is incompatible with the professional vocation of an educator.
- I am reminded of the catchphrase attributed to Bismarck that it is the teachers who win the battles.
- In my view, it is certainly true. All the more so in the context of the hybrid war currently being waged against Russia. Teachers are in the front line in this war. We need personal responsibility for the heads of educational institutions whose graduates have never held books devoted to the heroism of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War, or have a vague idea of the deeds of those who fought for the Motherland.
Issues of patriotic education of young people should not be relegated to optional classes. All this is beautifully described in reports, but there is no result. In some schools, including private ones, the word "patriotism" is considered outdated.
- How do you propose to change this situation?
- It is necessary to raise the authority of educators who are faithful to their profession and who dedicate their lives to educating genuine patriots. The most important task today is the revival of historical traditions, as well as the protection of traditional Russian spiritual and moral values. To solve it we need a systematic approach to upbringing and education. There is an urgent need to implement a state programme in this sphere at all stages of a person's maturation and development as a citizen. A comprehensive model of this process needs to be developed.
Our students and teachers are currently being squeezed out of the Western academic and educational world. I think it is expedient to abandon the so-called Bologna system of education and return to the experience of the best national educational model in the world.
Besides, we must consider significantly increasing the scale of the state order for the production of works of literature and art, films and TV programmes aimed at preserving the historical memory, cultivating pride in our country, and shaping a mature civil society that is clearly aware of its responsibility for its development and prosperity.
Only then will we be able to successfully confront those threats and challenges that are shaped by the collective West to influence individual, group and public consciousness.
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