No One Should Be Deceived by Putin’s False Claims about ‘Russophobia,’ Aysin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 3 -- Vladimir Putin makes two false claims about Russophobia. On the one hand, he says that it is directed not only against ethnic Russians but against all the peoples of the Russian Federation; and on the other, he argues that it is driving Western actions rather than those actions being a response to what the Kremlin leader has done.

            The first of these false claims, the Tatar activist now living in Turkey says, has the effect of stripping all the non-Russians of their rights to any independent standing but also represents a threat to the ethnic Russians by threatening them with a future in which they will be melded together with all the rest (idelreal.org/a/32710888.html).

            And the second, he continues, is nothing more than a transparent attempt to distract attention from the reality that “the chief Russophobe is Putin himself, who has done everything to separate Russians from the world. He is in no way a defender of their interests but rather their destroyer.”

            For him, this is useful, Aysin says, because he wants to drive all those under his control into an archaic world in which he will be he master and they will be reduced to the status of serfs and state servants. Everyone needs to remember this rather than giving Putin a victory by assuming that Russophobia has some existence apart from what Putin is doing.