Ukrainian and Finnish Attention to Finno-Ugric Nations Part of West’s Hybrid War against Russia, Makarov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 7 – The United States, with its Captive Nations Week ideology, has pushed Ukraine and Finland to raise the issue of the status of the four million-strong Finno-Ugric nations inside Russia in the hopes of sparking protests in Russia’s oil and gas producing regions and thus undermining the strength of the Russian state, Vladislav Makarov says.

            This is all part of a broader hybrid war by the West against Russia, the Russian commentator says; and if it succeeds, the West will play off the statelets that would emerge from the collapse of the Russian Federation just as it has provoked wars among the post-Soviet states (politobzor.net/242276-finno-ugorskij-vopros-v-gibridnoj-vojne-zapada-protiv-rossii.html).

            Makarov is particularly incensed by Ukrainian plans to create a Finno-Ugric study center at Nizhyn Gogol State University and to prepare linguistic and area studies specialists there without drawing on expertise from the regions within Russia. It is obvious, he says, that this is not an academic effort but an incendiary political one.

            According to the commentator, “Russia does not support the project of studying Finno-Ugric languages in Nezhin State University because this is a project with an anti-Russian direction.” It is simply “a cover, the goal of which is the creation of a parallel ideological center for the destabilization of the situation in the Finno-Ugric regions of Russia.”

            Ukraine is not the only country following this path, Makarov continues. Helsiniki is constantly raising its concerns about the Karelians and Ingermanland Finns in Russia, and Sweden and Norway are working to split the Saami of Russia from the Russian nation and the Russian state.

            But all these countries, which are simply following the American line, the commentator says, should know that they are not acting in ways that will benefit the peoples they claim to be helping. Indeed, even if they succeeded in breaking the Finno-Ugrics away from Moscow, the first people to suffer would be those Finno-Ugrics and the second would be themselves.