Russia Being ‘Occupied’ by Migrant Workers and Must Save Itself by Leaving the CIS, Vetoshkin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 21 – Migrant workers are flooding into Russia, bringing with them crime and undermining the Russian nation, Sergey Vetoshkin says. Indeed, they are effectively “occupying” Russia with Moscow’s consent. “The first step to the de-occupation of our country must be the disbanding of the CIS which has exhausted itself.”

            The Russian commentator blames the Commonwealth of Independent States for Russia’s demographic crisis because it has allowed the authorities to assume that the decline of the Russian nation can be compensated for by allowing migrant workers to enter and remain in the country (svpressa.ru/blogs/article/380740/).

            But he argues that “the artificial formation of the CIS has become obsolete. If after the collapse of the USSR, it was a kind of psychological defense and a weak attempt to reserve the memory of the past and even cling to it, now, it has acquired the character of a parasite on the body of Russia.”

            “The republics of the former Soviet Union,” Vetoshkin says, “are using the CIS to impose their national interests on Russia, to drain its economic resources … and in this way, our national development is fettered and our economic opportunities are being squandered” with others getting the benefits.

            According to the commentator, “Russia’s withdrawal from the CIS or the dissolution of this entity will give our country the chance to build relations with each former republic on the basis of our interests and not theirs and allow us to plan our development without looking back to the past.”

            “Its time to let the former republics of the USSR float away, to get rid of this ballast.”