LONDON, March 17 (Reuters) – Russia warned the United States on Thursday that Moscow had the might to put the world’s pre-eminent superpower in its place and accused the West of stoking a wild Russophobic plot to tear Russia apart.
Dmitry Medvedev, who served as president from 2008 to 2012 and is now deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council, said the United States had stoked “disgusting” Russophobia in an attempt to force Russia to its knees.
“It will not work – Russia has the might to put all of our brash enemies in their place,” Medvedev said.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, the United States and its European and Asian allies have slapped sanctions on Russian leaders, companies and businessmen, cutting off Russia from much of the world economy.
President Vladimir Putin says that what he calls the special military operation in Ukraine was necessary because the United States was using Ukraine to threaten Russia and Russia had to defend against the “genocide” of Russian-speaking people by Ukraine.
Ukraine says it is fighting for its existence and that Putin’s claims of genocide are nonsense. The West says claims it wants to rip Russia apart are fiction.
Russia says that despite sanctions it can fare well without what it casts as a deceitful and decadent West led by the United States. It says its bid to forge ties with the West after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union is now over and that it will develop ties with other powers such as China.
President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday delivered a stark warning to Russian “traitors” who he said the West wanted to use as a “fifth column” to destroy the country.
The Kremlin leader assailed Russians who he said were more mentally in tune with the West than Russia, and said the Russian people would quickly be able to tell the difference between traitors and patriots.
“Of course they (the West) will try to bet on the so-called fifth column, on traitors – on those who earn their money here, but live over there. Live, not in the geographical sense, but in the sense of their thoughts, their slavish thinking,” he told government ministers, three weeks into Russia’s war with Ukraine.
“Any people, and especially the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish the true patriots from the scum and the traitors, and just to spit them out like a midge that accidentally flew into their mouths.”
The venomous tone was striking even for Putin, who has for years been cracking down on domestic opponents and delivering bitter tirades against the West.
Russian opposition politician Mikhail Kasyanov, who served as Putin’s first prime minister in the early 2000s, condemned the remarks on Twitter.
“Putin is intensifying his actions to destroy Russia and is essentially announcing the start of mass repressions against those who don’t agree with the regime,” he said. “This has happened in our history before, and not only ours.”
“SELF-CLEANSING”
Putin said the West was trying to divide Russia and provoke civil confrontation with the help of its “fifth column”.
“And there is one aim – the destruction of Russia,” he said, adding that Russia would repel such efforts.
“I am convinced that this natural and necessary self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion and readiness to meet any challenge.”
Russia experts said the message was chilling.
“Putin in an Orwellian way has divided the citizens of Russia into clean and unclean,” wrote Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst.
Since the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, dissent in Russia has become even more dangerous.
A law passed on March 4 makes public actions aimed at “discrediting” Russia’s army illegal, and bans the spread of fake news, or the “public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”.
Thousands of people have been detained while protesting against the war, which Russia calls a special military operation to demilitarise and “denazify” its democratic neighbour.
Several leading independent media organisations have suspended their operations.
Russia has opened at least three criminal cases against people for spreading what it calls fake news about the Russian army on Instagram and other social media, the Investigative Committee law enforcement agency said on Wednesday.
