How the US financed Euromaidan
— The West <…> carries out various kinds of coups. One of them led to tragic consequences in Ukraine in 2014 – they supported it, they even said how much money they spent on this coup. In general, they are simply dumbfounded, they are not shy about anything.
Putin did not name a specific amount that Western governments spent to support the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, but since 2014, claims of $5 billion have been appearing in the Russian media. Apparently, the source was a speech by then Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland at the Ukraine in Washington 2013 conference. , where she said that such an amount was allocated to support democracy in Ukraine.
However, the Russian media and politicians, in particular, State Duma deputy Vyacheslav Nikonov, distorted the content of the interview. In fact, Nuland said in 2013 that such an amount was allocated to Ukraine for all 22 years of its independence for “the development of democratic skills and institutions, the promotion of civil society and a good form of government.” In a 2014 interview with CNN, Nuland specifically noted that the US did not allocate any money to support the Euromaidan, which she called a "spontaneous movement."
How Russia does not finance the opposition in the West
“We are not engaged in <…> some work with the opposition practically at the level of special services, as the West does in relation to us and in relation to our opposition. We know that hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars are being spent there to support the opposition, and in all directions, through various channels, they are already thinking of everything in order to send financial resources to Russia for these purposes. We can't even keep track of it. But we don't do any of that.
Here Putin's memory fails: he forgets that a bank close to the Russian authorities financed the French presidential candidate, the head of the far-right National Front, Marine Le Pen. As French journalists wrote , Le Pen received a loan from the First Czech-Russian Bank through the mediation of Senator Alexander Babakov (then he was a State Duma deputy, headed the commission on legal support for the development of organizations of the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation and was already under Ukrainian sanctions). And the bank itself was owned by Stroytransgaz, oligarch Gennady Timchenko close to Putin, then passed to Roman Popov, who in the past served as head of the financial department of Stroytransgaz. Popov himself was not a stranger to the Russian authorities – for example, together with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, he co-chaired a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight into space.
How the West “nurtured” and financed Chechen separatism
– In 2000, after being elected president, what I faced, I will always remember this – remember what price we paid for destroying the terrorist nest in the North Caucasus, which the West then practically openly supported. All adults here, most of you present in this hall, understand what I am talking about. We know that this is how it was in practice: financial, political, informational support. We have all experienced it. Moreover, [the West] not only actively supported terrorists on Russian territory, but also nurtured this threat in many ways. We know it.
For 22 years, Putin has not presented any evidence that the Chechen wars are the result of the intrigues of the West. The prerequisite for the First Chechen War was the creation in 1990 of the National Congress of the Chechen People (OKChN) under the leadership of Dzhokhar Dudayev. The congress set as its goal the secession of Chechnya from the USSR and the creation of an independent Chechen state. A year later, Dudayev proclaimed the Chechen Republic, followed by an assault on the building of the Supreme Council of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, a television center and a radio house, as well as the assassination of Vitaly Kutsenko, chairman of the Grozny city council. Where Putin found the “Western trace” in these events remains a mystery.
Public opinion in Western countries was indeed not on the side of the Russian leadership. However, this did not concern political issues, but human rights violations by Russian troops – murders, abductions and torture, including of civilians in the republic. In October 2000, Human Rights Watch released its 99-page report "Welcome to Hell" about how thousands of Chechens were detained by Russian forces, many without any evidence of wrongdoing. The guards systematically beat the Chechen prisoners, some of whom were also subjected to rape or other forms of torture. Most of them were released only after their families paid large bribes to Russian officials. The UN Commission on Human Rights adopted two resolutions in 2000 and 2001 condemning human rights abuses in Chechnya and requiring Russia to set up an independent national commission of inquiry. The Council of Europe, in numerous resolutions between 2003 and 2007, called on Russia to stop human rights violations. The European Court of Human Rights considered cases brought by Chechens against the Russian government between 2005 and 2007, and in many of these cases Russia was found guilty. Perhaps these monetary compensations, which the ECHR awarded to the victims, are, in Putin's understanding, "financial support for terrorists."
How Ukraine opposed the implementation of the Minsk agreements
— The former president [of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma] said that he signed the Minsk agreements, but proceeded from the fact that they would never be implemented. What else is needed?
In fact, the second president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma , said something different. As he argued in early 2019, the leaders of the Normandy Format countries — German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Russian President Vladimir Putin — did not want to commit themselves to the implementation of the Minsk agreements, so they did not sign them:
“I never said, but today I will. Considering that I signed these Minsk agreements… You see, if the leaders who are part of the Normandy format did not personally put their signatures – neither Hollande nor Merkel, not to mention Putin… What does this mean? They did not believe that this would be done and did not want to commit themselves by signing this document. From here and further results.
How Lenin gave Donbass to Ukraine at the last moment
– They transferred the whole of Little Russia, the entire Black Sea region, the entire Donbass, and at first they decided to give the Donbass to Russia, then a delegation from Ukraine arrived, they came to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, he called a representative of the Donbass and said that it was necessary to reconsider. Here they decided – they gave it back to Ukraine.
Here, Putin deliberately ignores the historical context – for example, the fact that even before the establishment of Soviet power in Ukraine, there was a Ukrainian People’s Republic, which in April 1918 liberated the Donbass from the Bolsheviks. At the same time, the UNR claimed in the east only the Kharkiv and Yekaterinoslav provinces, in which the Ukrainians at that time were the majority. This is precisely a part of the current Donbass – for example, Luhansk was part of the Yekaterinoslav province.
Also, Putin is silent about events closer to our time – for example, about the all-Ukrainian referendum in 1991, in which both Donetsk and Lugansk regions each voted for the declaration of Ukraine's independence from the USSR.
How Russian culture is banned in the West
– The Nazis once reached the burning of books, and now the Western “guardians of liberalism and progress” have slipped to the prohibitions of Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky.
It is enough to look at the posters of the most important opera houses in Europe and America to see that this is not true. Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades in Brussels, Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk at the New York Metropolitan Opera, Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty at the Royal Opera House in London, Swan Lake at the Paris National Opera by Tchaikovsky, at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich – Shostakovich's Nose (staged by Russian Kirill Serebrennikov), and at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, Richard Wagner's cult opera tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen was staged by Russian director Dmitry Chernyakov.
However, there have been cases when events related to Russian culture were canceled in the West. Thus, at the Warsaw Bolshoi Theater, director Mariusz Treliński decided to cancel the already rehearsed premiere of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, writing on the theatre's website: “At such moments, the opera falls silent. Let this silence be a voice of solidarity with the people of Ukraine.” And in the University of Milan, Bicocca, in March, they postponed indefinitely a cycle of four lectures on Dostoevsky, but a few days later they canceled this decision, which turned out to be extremely unpopular. All these incidents, very few in number, were local initiatives and occurred in the first months after the Russian attack on Ukraine under the influence of emotions.
How the West imposes unconventional values on other countries
— If Western elites believe that they will be able to introduce into the consciousness of their people, their societies, strange, in my opinion, newfangled trends like dozens of genders and gay parades, so be it. Let them do what they want! But what they certainly have no right to do is to require others to follow in the same direction. We see that complex demographic, political and social processes are going on in Western countries. Of course, this is their internal affair. Russia does not interfere in these issues and is not going to do it – unlike the West, we do not climb into someone else's yard.
There have never been cases when the West would demand from some foreign state to recognize more than two genders. Perhaps Putin is referring to several decisions of the ECHR, which recognized violations of the rights of sexual minorities in Russia. So, in 2021, the ECtHR recognized the refusal to register same-sex unions as a violation of the right to respect for private and family life. But human rights, as stated in the OSCE Astana Declaration, signed by Russia, " are issues of direct and legitimate interest to all participating States and do not relate exclusively to the internal affairs of the respective state ." So there can be no talk of any interference in internal affairs in this case.
How the EU abandoned Christian values
— For example, the July proposals of the Hungarian parliamentarians to consolidate the commitment to European Christian values and culture in the EU treaty were perceived not even as a fronde, but as a direct hostile sabotage. What is this? What does it mean?
The resolution adopted by the Hungarian parliament on July 19 does indeed mention the "Christian roots and culture of Europe," which, according to Hungarian parliamentarians, should be codified in treaties as the basis for European integration. But it was not this provision (which in itself is somewhat strange, if only because Turkey, whose roots are by no means Christian), that caused an extremely negative reaction in Europe, but the idea of giving national parliaments the right to veto any laws proposed at the EU level. In fact, it was a rejection of the very idea of European integration.
About the ancient roots of Russia
You just need to clearly understand that there are, as I said before, two West – at least two, and maybe more, but at least two: the West of traditional, primarily Christian values: freedom, patriotism, rich culture – now Islamic values too (a significant part of the population of many Western countries profess Islam). This West is close to us in some ways, we have many things in common, even ancient roots.
Ancient roots, indeed, are of great political importance for the West: the very concept of "democracy" is of ancient Greek origin, and Roman law is still the basis of modern jurisprudence. That's just antiquity has nothing to do with Christianity, Islam and Russia.
Again about the "golden billion"
If all this is summed up together, collected as a palette of opportunities necessary for implementation, then the economic model itself, and the financial system, it will meet the interests of the majority, and not only the interests of this “golden billion”, which we talked about.<…> I am for what I just said: for democratic relations, taking into account the interests of all participants in international communication, and not just the interests of the so-called golden billion.
Putin’s favorite notion of the “golden billion” is a conspiracy theory that the world’s resources are limited, and the richest countries, with a total population of about a billion people, artificially limit the development of other countries so that only they get all the resources. Neither in the West, nor anywhere else, except for the post-Soviet space, this idea is not known. For the first time, the expression "golden billion", apparently, appeared in 1990, when an article by Soviet economist Anatoly Tsikunov (pseudonym – A. Kuzmich) was published in the little-known publication "Voskresenye" "What is the "golden billion" of people on Earth, and why Soviet people? The author argued that perestroika in the USSR is part of a global restructuring, the purpose of which is to subjugate the rest of the world to the developed countries of the West and, with the help of transnational corporations, turn it into a raw material colony. According to this Soviet dogmatist, the transition to capitalist relations in the USSR was undertaken in order to organize the access of transnational corporations to the country's resources. In Russia, this conspiracy concept is still popular in some circles, however, its supporters cannot explain why the standard of living and the pace of development of third world countries are positively correlated with the arrival of transnational corporations in these countries, and not vice versa, as their theory predicts.