Zakharova’s Saying that Only Elite Should Travel Abroad Shows Elite’s Contempt for Ordinary Russians, Shaburov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 29 – In the course of a recent interview, Mariya Zakharova, the spokesperson for the Russian foreign ministry, repeatedly said that “tourist travel abroad should be accessible only to the well-off” or the well-connected shows the elite’s contempt for ordinary Russians, Aleksey Shaburov says.

            She said again and again, the Yekaterinburg commentator continues, that in the new environment, ordinary people won’t be able to make such trips and she seemed glad that was so, apparently believing that “’the pre-crisis era’” was something “abnormal” (politsovet.ru/66317-zagranica-dlya-izbrannyh-kak-mariya-zaharova-ozvuchila-taynye-zhelaniya-elity.html).

            Zakharova “recalled her childhood (she herself comes from a family of diplomats) when frights on jets could permit themselves only people with money or connections. And this, one can only conclude from her words, was correct,” Shaburov says. It isn’t something just anybody should be able to do.

            There is no certainty that she was speaking for the entire foreign ministry or the Russian government. She presented this position as her “personal view.”  But one can’t avoid the suspicion that what she was saying reflected the position of more than just herself and that the elite is convinced that “only the elect” should be allowed to make trips abroad.

            What makes Zakharova’s statements so disturbing, Shaburov says, is the time at which she is making them, a time when Russians are suffering from the pandemic and economic crisis and have as their only support the hope that they will again be able to take vacations abroad as has been true for many in the last two decades.

            “A more inappropriate moment for such expressions would be impossible to think up,” the Politsovet editor says. “Now Russians will feel even more strongly that the powers despise them and only dream about how to lock them up and not allow them to go where only gentlemen are supposed to be allowed.”

            Maybe that is in fact the case, Shaburov concludes, but this is hardly the time to say so.