Politics.be - Russische leiders in hun eigen woorden

Citaat:

Dear friends,

I would like to greet you and express my gratitude for your continuing to invite me even though I chair the Supervisory Board. It is important for me to see you, listen to your questions and understand what worries you in this uneasy period.

This meeting takes place against the backdrop of events now occurring in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly spoken at length about the origins of this crisis. I would like to briefly reiterate: this is not about Ukraine. This is the end-result of a policy that the West has carried out since the early 1990s. It was clear back then that Russia was not going to be docile and that it was going to have a say in international matters. This is not because Russia wants to be a bully. Russia has its history, its tradition, its own understanding of the history of its peoples and a vision on how it can ensure its security and interests in this world.

This became clear in the late 1990s-early 2000s. The West has repeatedly attempted to stall the independent and autonomous development of Russia. This is rather unfortunate. From the start of President Vladimir Putin’s “rule” in the early 2000s, we were open to the idea of working with the West in various ways, even in a form similar to that of an alliance, as the President has said. Sadly, we were unable to do this. We repeatedly suggested that we should conclude treaties and base our security on equal rights, rejecting the idea of strengthening one’s security at the expense of another.

Neither were we able to promote economic cooperation. The European Union, which back then showed some signs of independent decision-making, has now devolved toward being completely dependent on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the US. The story of Nord Stream 2 was the highlight of this change. Even Germany, which defended its interests in the project to the very end, was persuaded that the “project was not in its interests.” Germany and its people were told what their interests were by people on the other side of the Atlantic. Many other international areas were blocked despite our commitment to close cooperation on an equal basis.

The West did not want equal cooperation and, as we can now see, has kept true to the “will and testament” of Zbigniew Brzezinski who said that Ukraine should not be allowed to side with Russia. With Ukraine, Russia is a great power, while without Ukraine, it is a regional player. We understand that this is a mere exaggeration. But it fits nevertheless the philosophy and the mentality of western leaders. No effort was spared to turn Ukraine into an instrument to contain Russia. Into an “anti-Russia,” as President Putin said. This is neither a metaphor nor an exaggeration.

What has been happening all these years is the significant accumulation of physical, military, ideological, and philosophical threats to the security of the Russian Federation. The militarisation of Ukraine, which was injected with weapons (including assault weapons) worth many billions of dollars over these years, was accompanied by the Nazification of all spheres of society and the eradication of the Russian language. You know the laws that were passed there concerning education, the state language, and the indigenous peoples of Ukraine that made no mention of Russians. It was not only the language that was being edited out, but simply everything Russian. They banned the mass media, which broadcast from Russia and transmitted in Ukraine. Three Ukrainian television channels that were considered disloyal to the current government were shut down. Neo-Nazi battalions with insignia of Hitler’s SS divisions held marches; torchlight processions took place with a presidential regiment assigned as an official escort; fighters were trained in camps by instructor programmes from the US and other Western countries. All this was done with the connivance of civilised Europe and with the support of the Ukrainian government.

To my great regret and shame, President Zelensky has been asking how he could be a Nazi if he has Jewish roots. He said this on the exact day when Ukraine demonstratively withdrew from the Agreement on Perpetuating the Memory of the Courage and Heroism of the Peoples of the CIS Countries During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. When he personally patronises the tendencies I have mentioned, it is difficult to take the policy of the Ukrainian leadership seriously. Just as in the early stages of his presidency, and even earlier, when he was a stage and soap opera star, he assured me in every possible way that it was unthinkable for him that the Russian language could be infringed upon. So here we are: life demonstrates what a person’s word is worth.

These accumulated tendencies took on a new form following the coup d’etat in February 2014. Despite the guarantees of the EU countries — France, Germany and Poland — that were part of the agreement between the opposition and the then-President of Ukraine, they tore up that agreement the morning after, disregarded the guarantees, humiliated the nations above, and the EU as a whole, before announcing their new regime. In our conversations with our western partners, including the Germans and the French, we have been asking them how they could allow this to happen. We kept reiterating, you provided guarantees to this agreement. They say this happened because Yanukovich left Kiev. Yes he did, but he left for Kharkov to take part in his party’s congress. Yes, he faced a number of issues and did not enjoy broad support, but he never fled. Still, this is not about Yanukovich.

The first point of the Agreement read that the Government of National Accord was to be established as an interim stage for early presidential elections. Most likely, the then president would not have won, and everyone knew this. All the opposition had to do was to wait and fulfil what it agreed to. Instead, they immediately ran back to “Maidan.” They seized the government building and said, “congratulate us, we have created a government of winners.” And this is how their instincts were immediately manifested. Winners. First of all, they demanded that the Verkhovna Rada abolish any privileges granted to the Russian language. This, despite the fact that the Russian language was and is still enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine, which declares that the state must guarantee the rights of Russians and other ethnic minorities. They demanded that Russians get out of Crimea because they would never think like Ukrainians, speak Ukrainian or honour Ukraine’s heroes Bandera and Shukhevich. They sent combat battalions and “friendship trains” to that peninsula to storm the Supreme Council building. At this point, Crimea rebelled, and Donbass refused to accept the coup d'état and instead asked to be left alone. But they were not left alone. Donbass didn’t attack anyone. But they were declared terrorists and an anti-terrorist operation was launched, with troops being sent in, with nearly all of the West applauding the move. That’s when it became evident exactly what plans were in store for the future role of Ukraine.

The massacre was stopped with enormous effort and through Russia’s active participation. The Minsk agreements were signed. You know what happened to them next. For seven long years, we tried to appeal to the conscience of those who signed the agreements, above all, to France and Germany. The end was tragic.

We held several summits and meetings at other levels, and Ukraine, either under Poroshenko or under Zelensky, just did not want to comply with the agreements. First of all, they refused to open a direct dialogue with Donetsk and Lugansk. We asked the Germans and the French why they would not make their proteges at least sit down at the negotiation table. The answer was that they did not think that the republics were independent, and that it was all Russia’s fault. End of conversation. Contrary to its commitments under the Minsk agreements, late last year and early this year, Kiev began to build up its forces along the line of contact up to 120,000 troops. Contrary to the ceasefire agreements that had been signed and violated many times prior, they dramatically increased their heavy shelling, always targeting residential areas. The same has been happening for all these eight years, with varying degrees of intensity, amid complete silence from all the international “human rights” organisatons and Western “civilised democracies.”

Shelling intensified at the start of this year. We received information that Ukraine wanted to implement their Plan B, which they had long threatened, to take the regions by force. This was made worse by the West’s stonewalling of Russia’s initiative to reach an agreement on an equal and indivisible security architecture in Europe. President Vladimir Putin put forward this initiative in November 2021, we drafted the necessary documents and relayed them to the US and NATO in December 2021. They responded that they were willing to negotiate certain issues, including where missiles could not be deployed, but that Ukraine and NATO was none of our business. Ukraine was said to have reserved its right to appeal to join NATO, which would then deliberate whether to admit it, and all this without asking anyone else (likely ending up granting Ukraine’s membership). This was the essence of what they told us.

This is why when Ukraine commenced its shelling, signifying a clear sign of preparations to launch a military offensive in Donbass, we had no other choice but to protect Russian people in Ukraine. We recognised the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics. President Vladimir Putin responded to their request by ordering the launch of a special military operation. I am certain that you are following the events and know that the operation has brought to light our worst fears about Ukraine’s military plans and has helped us derail them.

You know that facts have been uncovered of a dangerous bioweapons programme that the Pentagon has been carrying out in many cities of Ukraine. Now that Russia’s armed forces have acquired access to these documents, the US has been trying to cover its tracks. We will be fighting for the truth to come out. This bioweapons research is not limited to Ukraine and is being conducted in over 300 laboratories in various countries, most of them located in former Soviet Union nations along the borders of Russia and the People’s Republic of China.

This was not our choice. We saw how the West’s attitude was communicating one simple truth – if you were a Russophobe; if you were set on eradicating Katsaps and Moskals (a quote from statements made by Ukrainian politicians); if you were to say that anyone who considers themselves Russian and is a citizen of Ukraine should get out for the sake of their future and their children, (as President Vladimir Zelensky said in September 2021); if you obediently fulfill Western bidding so as to constantly irritate, unnerve and unbalance Russia, then you have the universal green light to do anything.

The unprecedentedly hysterical reaction in the West to our military operation, the way they are encouraging and indulging everything anti-Russia and anti-Russian is sad news indeed. I regularly read about the ill treatment that Russian people face in other countries, including citizens of those countries who are of Russian origin. It appears anyone can demand that these people be persecuted in the West now, even on social media. I cannot wrap my mind around this.

But this all proves one thing: the anti-Russia project has failed. President Vladimir Putin has listed the goals of the operation, and the first on the list is to ensure the safety of people in Donbass, and the second one, to eliminate the growing threats to the Russian Federation from the militarisation and Nazification of Ukraine. When they realised that our policy line had helped to thwart their plans, they literally went ballistic.

And yet, we have always supported diplomatic solutions to any problems. Over the course of hostilities, President Vladimir Zelensky proposed negotiations. President Vladimir Putin agreed. The talks are underway, although the Ukrainian delegation did start by, as we say, simply going through the motions. Then dialogue actually began. Even so, there is always the feeling that the Ukrainian delegation is manipulated by the West (most likely, the Americans), and is not allowed to agree to our demands, which are bare minimum, in my opinion. The process is underway.

We continue to be open to cooperation with any countries, including Western ones. However, given how the West has behaved, we are not going to propose any initiatives. Let’s see how they will get themselves out of this self-imposed impasse. They have got themselves into this impasse along with their “values,” “free market principles,” rights to private property and the presumption of innocence. They have trampled on all of this.

Many countries are already beginning to rack their brains in search of ways to slowly “creep away” from the dollar in international settlements. Look what has happened. What if they do not like something else tomorrow? The United States is sending its diplomats around the world, its ambassadors in every country have orders to demand that these countries end cooperation with Russia under the threat of sanctions. We would understand if they did this with small countries. But when such ultimatums and demands are given to China, India, Egypt, or Turkey, it looks like our American colleagues have totally lost touch with reality, or their superhuman complex has overwhelmed their sense of normalcy. We have seen such complexes in human history, and we do know about this.

I do not want to be the only speaker, though. I would like to hear from you. What questions do you have, what are you interested in?

Question: For those who do not know, Riga was part of the Russian Empire longer than Sevastopol was. How long will Russian people need a visa to travel to Russia? Is it possible to issue maybe a card or something for compatriots from the Baltics and European countries, so that they could travel or work in Russia? There is a residence permit, but if you leave for more than six months you lose your residency. In the current situation, when Russophobia is on the rise, this would be especially relevant.

The mistakes made by the public, the “soft power,” then have to be corrected by the army (as we see in Ukraine). Perhaps in countries where Russia faces direct opposition it would make sense to work not through Russian Community Councils (which quickly find themselves under the control of local authorities), but rather to decentralise work. For example, Americans have 20 different funds. You can be anything – green, blue, light blue, whatever, but if you are anti-Russia, this opens all the necessary doors.

Sergey Lavrov: I agree with you about visas. This is an old problem. We have a complicated bureaucracy. This discussion between liberals and conservatives has been going on since the late 1990s and early 2000s. The liberals believed we needed to remove as many barriers as possible so that people with Russian roots, who speak Russian and are involved in cultural and humanitarian events, enjoyed a preferential entry regime. The debate was quite lively when the law on compatriots was adopted, and they discussed the “compatriot card” option. This was one of the most important matters discussed. However, no agreement was reached, including for legal reasons – because it is not a passport or a half-passport. For example, Poland issues Pole’s Cards. These can essentially be used as passports. There are other instruments to liaise with their diasporas in Western countries (with ethnic Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians), and in the Middle East, too. Even in Syria, there is an entire ministry (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates). We are currently working on additional steps that we can take in this direction.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin has appointed me to head the Commission for International Cooperation and Support for Compatriots Abroad. The commission will meet at the end of March. This question will be one of the main ones on the agenda. We will discuss it in the context of a broader approach called repatriation. I believe that repatriation must be legally formalised with all the necessary formalities and the with all legal norms observed. This must be done in order to dramatically facilitate the procedure for those who identify as Russians to relocate or come to stay in Russia. We will try to consider your question as well as part of this approach.

As for the soft power, the Russian Community Councils and the American method – there must be some school of thought that prompts such action. As we promoted the movement of compatriots, we sought to make their actions transparent, so that they did not arouse any suspicion of being involved in underground activities. Unfortunately, that was all in vain. All this transparency backfired. What they are doing with the management of the Russian Community Council in the United States is pure McCarthyism. Its leaders had to return to Russia, otherwise the FBI threatened to imprison them for a long time because they promoted projects between compatriots who maintained cultural and humanitarian ties with Russia. Recall how the Americans treated Maria Butina. She worked openly and completely freely in the United States, promoting joint projects. In the US, all NGOs for the most part explicitly declare they are supported and funded by the Agency for International Development. Other Western countries have many projects that prefer to keep this information to themselves. I wouldn't want us to act like this. First, it would be dangerous for the people concerned. Secondly, these are the methods of the intelligence services, not soft power methods. On the other hand, American soft power relies heavily on the CIA and other special services.

We will think of ways to support our compatriots in situations where a true witch hunt has been unleashed against them. I think more flexible forms of support could be implemented, including the Foundation for Supporting and Protecting the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad. The essence of this is the provision of legal assistance to those who find themselves in a difficult situation. There is also the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund. We will think about some additional formats, naturally, fully legitimate ones.

Russia needs to toughen its policy with regard to shadow agencies engaged in things that do not coincide with their charter and other documents. Thank you for showing such an interest. We will certainly try to take this into account.

Question: What contribution do you think representatives of other states can make to the development of international relations with the Russian Federation?

Sergey Lavrov: We will support any public initiatives aimed at developing cooperation in the post-Soviet space. There are many forms for interaction in the CIS, in the CSTO, and in the EAEU, which are of interest to public movements and organisations and that can be used to organise events.

I sincerely would not want to give you any specific ideas here. You know better. You have a feel for what life is like in your country, and how it is affected by relations with Russia on the official, investment, and trade tracks.

As for the Russian Community Councils, in some countries our compatriots are beginning to create alternative councils. It is possible that people are just being competitive, which is only natural, but if you have an interest in doing something on the ground, we will only welcome this. If you need some advice, I am available to listen to your ideas and see how we can support them together with our Kazakhstani colleagues.

Question: I have a proposal, not a question. We have set up a pressure group on this track, and we have already drafted our own proposals. We are ready to help promote Russian culture and the Russian language in Germany, the Baltics and other countries. We would like to become independent analysts and experts and to develop culture, the Russian language and to support compatriots and foreigners who love the Russian language, and who aspire to culture. We would be happy to take part in this process.

Sergey Lavrov: That’s wonderful. Could you please leave your proposals and contacts with the organisers? The Foreign Ministry exercises various functions within the framework of the Government Commission for Compatriots Abroad, and I head this Commission. Our Ministry is also the main body responsible for the implementation of a new federal targeted programme to promote international cooperation. This is what soft power is all about. We also have a programme for supporting the Russian language abroad. In effect, opportunities still exist for the kind of projects you mentioned. I look forward to reading your letter.

Question: As of late, many Western activists, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, have addressed the people of Russia. If you were able to address all the peoples of the world in the West, the East and in Latin America, what would you tell them to make sure they hear you?

Sergey Lavrov: I would tell them that all peoples should be true to themselves, and that they should not abandon their traditions, history, aspirations and world outlook.

Getting back to Ukraine, the Americans are gloating over this situation and rubbing their hands with glee. In all, 140 countries voted against Russia at the UN General Assembly. We know how these countries reached this decision: US ambassadors have been shuttling from capital to capital and demanding that even the great powers comply with their demands, and they don’t shy away from speaking about it in public. They either want to offend others, or they have completely lost all sense of proportion, while comprehending their own superiority. However, out these 140 countries voting on US orders, not one imposed any sanctions except the West. An overwhelming majority of countries did not impose any sanctions on Russia. It appears that, by voting, some of them wanted to minimise damage, but they don’t want to shoot themselves in the foot, and they will continue to develop their economy. Many independent leaders are saying openly that they don’t want to fulfil US instructions to their own detriment.

So, people of the world, be true to yourselves.

Question: What should the West do now that events have dramatically escalated to move things back towards a realm of peace, tranquility, kindness and cooperation?

Sergey Lavrov: The West should start minding its own business and stop lecturing others. Because right now, all we hear is “Russia must..” Why must we do anything, and how have we so upset the West? I really do not understand. They’ve dragged out our security guarantees initiatives. They told us not to worry about NATO expansion because it does not threaten our security. Why do they get to decide what we need for our security? This is our business. They do not allow us anywhere near discussions of their own security. We are constantly reminded that NATO is a defensive organisation. First, this defensive alliance bombed Yugoslavia. We only recently recalled how in 1998 Joe Biden was so proud that he personally contributed to the decision to bomb Belgrade, and bridges over the Drina River. It was fascinating to hear this from someone who claims Russia is led by war criminals.

NATO also acted in Iraq without a UN Security Council resolution. In Libya, it did have a resolution, but it only covered establishing a no-fly zone, so that Muammar Gadaffi's aircraft could not take off from their airfields. They didn't. On the other hand, NATO bombed all the army positions from the air, which the UN Security Council did not warrant, and brutally killed Muammar Gadaffi without trial or investigation. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went live on air to celebrate the event.

Strategically speaking, there was indeed a collective defence alliance when the Berlin Wall and the Warsaw Pact existed. It was clear where the line of defence was then. When the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist, NATO foreswore not to expand to the East, but began to do just that. We have seen five waves of expansion by now, contrary to its assurances. And each time, the imaginary Berlin Wall was moved further east. The alliance assumed the right to determine the boundary of its line of defence. Now Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has declared that NATO must bear global responsibility and is obliged to ensure security in the Indo-Pacific region. It is their name for the Asia-Pacific region. So, NATO is ready to “defend itself” in the South China Sea now. They are building defence lines against China now, so China, too, needs to be on the alert for that. A really unusual type of defence.

As for the Indo-Pacific region, which we have always called the Asia-Pacific region, there is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) there, as well as mechanisms created around the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ASEAN has a dozen partners. We participate in holding the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Security Forum, and the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus, a platform for ASEAN and its twelve partners which include China, Russia, the West (including Australia) and India – all the key players. Those formats work on the basis of consensus. This does not suit the Americans though, because to pursue their policy to contain China, they need an anti-China mechanism. But no platform where China is a member can produce such a result. They proclaimed the Indo-Pacific strategies and created Quad – a group of four nations including the United States, Australia, Japan, and they also lured India into this group. Our Indian friends are well aware of what we are talking about. They said they would participate in this only in the context of economic and infrastructure projects, but not military ones. So, because they needed to build up the military component, they created a parallel format, AUKUS, which included Australia, the UK and the United States. Now they want to expand it by adding Japan and South Korea, and even some ASEAN countries. This will lead to the collapse of the ASEAN ten.

When the Indo-Pacific concept was announced, we asked what was wrong with the Asia-Pacific label. We were told it mixed two different things because Asia did not refer to an ocean, but the Pacific did. Hence the Indian Ocean and Asia. We asked, if this includes the Indian Ocean, does this mean the whole of East Africa will be involved in this cooperation? They said no. That region had too many problems they did not want to deal with as they had enough on their plate. Is the Persian Gulf also part of the Indian Ocean? They said no to that too, disowning it. This makes it clear that the Indo part has been included with the sole purpose of cozying up to India and trying even harder to turn it into an anti-China player.

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited India in early February 2022. I spoke frankly with them. Our Indian friends understand everything perfectly and will never be open to such “cooperation” or play someone else’s games. India is a great country. Making such provocations against great powers is simply disrespectful.

Back to our discussion – we tried to negotiate with the West up to the last minute. But relations with the EU were destroyed back in 2014. All mechanisms, and there were plenty of them: biannual summits, annual meetings of the Russian Government and the European Commission, four common spaces being developed under four roadmaps, 20 industry-based dialogues – all that was derailed simply because the people in Crimea, faced with a radical neo-Nazi threat, voted for reunification with Russia.

Our Western colleagues do have this curious approach towards politics – when considering any problem in international politics, they cut off periods of time that are not favourable to them. When we discussed Ukraine with them, they said that we “annexed” Crimea. Wait, but what happened before that? They failed to make the opposition do what they themselves had signed on to. The opposition violated all guarantees and, contrary to the agreements, carried out a coup d'état and proclaimed an openly anti-Russia policy line. They began trying to suppress everything Russian. But Westerners called it “the price one has to pay for democratic processes.” They could not even say the word coup.

Last autumn, I asked the Germans and the French, how is this so? It is the Minsk Agreements we are talking about. Why are you so stubborn about this annexation part? It all started then. “This is the price one has to pay for democratic processes.” You see, this is their approach – they ignore what is unfavourable to them. They just single out one of the symptoms and begin to build their entire policy on it.

Question: Politics is about forestalling. I would like to take a look into the future. How do you, as an absolute professional in this area, see the future of the Slavic peoples’ coexistence in this space? I am sure that everything will be well. However, the forms of such coexistence may differ. What is your opinion of its stability and preferred forms?

Sergey Lavrov: We should follow the lines dictated by life itself. We have reached an extremely important milestone. I am referring to the 28 union programmes. They are described as roadmaps. These programmes are being actively and efficiently transformed into normative acts. We need to have many of them. The majority have already been drafted, and the rest are at the advanced stage of preparation. They will ensure not just our rapprochement but the creation of a common economic foundation, which is necessary to level out rights in absolutely all spheres, including trade, investment, the implementation of economic projects, access to state orders and more.

As for the political superstructure, we have the union parliament, the union cabinet of ministers, and the Supreme State Council chaired by our presidents. These bodies will deal with economic business development to see if our political bodies should be additionally adjusted to our superstructure. I am sure that we will rely on the opinion of our peoples, who regard each other as fraternal and truly close peoples.

Question: I have a question about soft power. School education concerns not only the external but also the internal contours. For the past seven years, I have been closely monitoring developments in children’s culture, which can be described as extremely pro-liberal. Today we need to overhaul the cultural space here and to quickly launch the introduction of our cultural codes abroad. Here is a simple example: the animated television series Masha and the Bear has done more in the external contour to improve Russia’s image abroad than many official programmes. Are there any programmes, or plans to launch programmes to change the cultural code both in the internal and the external contours? I have a proposal, which I would like to formulate and to submit through this event’s organisers tomorrow, if I may.

Sergey Lavrov: Yes, of course. I would like to urge everyone, including those who don’t have formulated proposals, to share their ideas with us. We will discuss all of them.

You have touched upon a very important issue. I am not directly involved in these efforts, but we have always been speaking about the need to start promoting our culture from the cradle, primarily in Russia. There is too much external influence now, and internal influence is not always effective in shaping the right worldview in our children. I am not talking about brainwashing people. But we need to prevent the brainwashing of our children by other forces. This is the issue. Children’s access to information must not be limited to one source. Do please submit your ideas. We will look at them together with the Culture Ministry.

Question: A colleague has mentioned the issue of visas. The lady from Kazakhstan has said what we should do abroad and how we should do it. Can you say what Russia’s priority is: to collect as many compatriots as possible in Russia, or to form a cordon or a barrier of compatriots outside the country?

Sergey Lavrov: I know that some political analysts are pondering this idea. I believe that people have a free choice. We must create the right conditions for those who want to return. I have already mentioned repatriation today. We will certainly deal with this matter at the United Russia’s Commission [on International Cooperation and Support for Compatriots Living Abroad]. I will do my best to help draft a law on this matter.

As for the interests of those who want to live where they are living, we must work with the authorities of their countries of residence to prevent discrimination against Russians, Russian education, [Russian] media outlets, etc. It will be more difficult to do this now, because our Western colleagues are encouraging Russophobia in all areas. Regrettably, they are trying to set the Georgian people on this track. When they recklessly adopted these horrible, inhuman sanctions, leaving 200,000 people outside the national territory, preventing them from using national airlinesand prohibiting Western air carriers from bringing these people home, the Prime Minister of Georgia announced that they were ready, in view of that humanitarian situation, to allow Georgian airlines to bring Russians from Europe and the EU closer to their home country. You remember how fiercely he was attacked for this. It was an elementary human desire to help people in difficult circumstances. If you have any complaints about your authorities, please write to us.

Question: There are no complaints. We will submit the proposals regarding possible support for our compatriots in foreign countries.

Sergey Lavrov: We have a channel for communication. We are interested in normal relations with our Georgian colleagues.

Question: All states are playing the same game: the author has trump cards and a support team in case there are dissenters. I am referring to the UK and the United States. This will go on until one of the parties ceases to exist. Is it not high time Russia started its own game within the framework of the Eurasian continent and friendly countries to promote peace, justice and security? Given its nuclear arsenal, Russia could guarantee the security of states (where it has been confirmed – Syria, Ukraine) for countries that currently depend to some or other extent on big, major players so that they can feel they are also involved.

Sergey Lavrov: I wouldn’t call it a game in the sense implied by Zbigniew Brzezinski’s terms “great Game” and “grand chessboard”. We proceed from the premise that our friends are people, states, and political parties which are our equals. Unlike the Western organisations, where there is little democracy. They invented consensus, but in NATO and the EU this consensus is a sham.

They adopted sanctions in instalments even before the current stage in the development of our geopolitical space (there has been a series of sanctions for no reason at all since 2014). Everything seems to have happened – Crimea, Donbass, the Minsk agreements… But every six months, they imposed new sanctions. Many of my European counterparts tell me confidentially: we understand that this is stupidity and a dead end, but we have consensus. I told one of them: a consensus means that a decision is not taken if there is even one “nay” vote. If you object, say so! This is a case of collective responsibility. Everyone says: I am against it, but all of them want a consensus. This consensus is shaped by an aggressive, Russophobic minority, primarily by the Baltic states (to my great regret), Poland, and recently Denmark.

Today, it is a sign of good manners for them to demonstrate that you are more of a Russophobe than your neighbours. In NATO, it is the United States that rules the roost. The EU is being dominated by the alliance. The neutral countries, which are not NATO members – Sweden, Finland, and Austria – are being drawn into cooperation under the cloak of “collective mobility.” This means that the neutral countries will allow NATO to use their roads and territories when it needs to move its military infrastructure east. This is being palmed off as NATO-EU partnership. I have mentioned Nord Stream 2 as an example. There is no longer any independence in Europe. They were just told: Stop taking care of your energy security on the terms that are beneficial to you; we will guarantee your security at a much higher price, but we will be in chips. President of France Emmanuel Macron is the only politician who continues to focus on strategic autonomy. Germany has resigned itself to the fact that they will have no such autonomy. There is no diktat of this sort in our country.

The difficulties arising in the work of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) are contingent on and explained by the democratic nature of these organisations rather than their weakness. They decide all matters by consensus and nothing can be imposed on them from outside. We have allied relations with Syria and good relations with Iran. I don’t think it will be a good idea to “knock together” a bloc. This will tie everyone’s hands, if we look at the situation pragmatically. It is better to have allied relations or an unprecedentedly close relationship of the kind we have with China. Our leaders said in one of the [bilateral] documents: relations have reached an unprecedentedly high level that in some respects even exceeds the traditional allied relations. That is absolutely true and hence we have multivariance.

The Russian Empire was created as follows. There was no melting-pot like in the United States. They have melted everyone into Americans. Generally, all Americans favour human rights. Practically all the states have an equal balance of rights. In the Russian Empire, as ethnic groups joined, Moscow and St Petersburg always sought to have regard for their unique identities and made efforts to preserve their cultures and religions. Multivariance in relations with foreign partners seems more effective and enables greater freedom of action in cases where such actions will be necessary.

Question: I am a citizen of the People’s Republic of China. I was born and grew up there. For many years, I have been involved in humanitarian cooperation (education) between China and Russia. I believe that Russia and China are two great powers that enjoy historical and cultural affinity. What areas of cooperation between China and Russia have best prospects?

Sergey Lavrov: It would be impossible to list the promising areas of cooperation between Russia and China. It would need an entire session of its own. Through Moscow and Beijing, we disseminate detailed information on what our two countries are working on together. Currently, this cooperation will be growing stronger. At a time when the West is most flagrantly eroding the entire bedrock that the international system stands on, we as two great powers have to think about our future in this world.

For the first time in many years, China has been declared the main target, previously it was Russia. Now we are targets on rotation. At this stage, their proclaimed goal is to deal with Russia and then go after China. When we communicated with the Western countries during less turbulent times, we asked them why they were allowing the American course against China to be built up and why was everyone being dragged into it? What did China do? “China is a threat.” What makes China a threat? “They are starting to defeat everybody economically.”

If you look at the beginning of China’s economic elevation, China started by simply accepting the rules of the game, which had been essentially created by the West, led by Americans. These rules included the international monetary system, the international trade system, the Bretton Woods System and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). China started playing by their rules and is now outplaying them on their home field by their rules. Is it a reason for changing the rules? It appears so. Who is proposing to reform the WTO? The West. Because the World Trade Organisation in its current form is providing rules that are fair. Therefore, if we just forget about the situation in Ukraine and the sanctions for a minute, the actions of the West confirm it is not reliable, either as a part of the world that generated the major reserve currencies, or as economic partners or as countries to store gold and currency reserves. We have things to work on. Our leaders and other members of the Government, foreign affairs agencies are working on this extensively as part of our traditionally regular dialogue.

Question: Russia is conducting an operation in Ukraine. It is not a secret that Russia is building a Greater Eurasia. Can you clue us in a little: is Sergey Shoigu going to stop at the border with Poland? Or are we going into Transnistria and Moldova? What is the plan? Are we going to unite further?

Sergey Lavrov: We declared our goals. They are fully legitimate and clear: to protect the people of Donbass (with which we are now allies) that are subject to blatant aggression. For these purposes and based on our treaties, we applied Article 51 of the UN Charter on collective self-defence. Another goal is to eliminate any threats to Russian security posed by the militarisation of Ukraine that is carried out by the West. There must be no strike weapons in the country or threats in the form of Ukraine’s nazification, for obvious reasons. The aggressive spirit of the Ukrainian elite has been consciously created to be like this by Western instructors throughout these decades. They trained neo-Nazi battalions, showing them how to conduct aggressive combat operations, etc. We have no other goals beyond these.

Alternatively, the other side may come up with some curious goals. For example, Prime Minister of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki has proposed an idea that will be discussed soon, which is to send NATO peacekeeping forces to Ukraine. It is possible that, should this decision be made all of a sudden, it will entail that Polish personnel will make up the core of these peacekeeping forces and they will take control over Western Ukraine, including the major city of Lvov, to remain there for a prolonged period of time. It appears to me that this is the plan.

I believe this initiative is doublespeak. NATO will realise they should be reasonable and realistic.

Question: It is now clear to everyone that the world will never be the same again. There is much talk these days about the new global architecture and the fact that its foundations are now being laid. I do agree with the notion that we have no need of a world without Russia. But what kind of a world do we want to build? What place will Russia and the Union State have in the new international order?

Sergey Lavrov: What we want is an equitable world, free from war, aggressive projects or attempts to pitch one country against another. Equitable is also the way we see Russia’s place in the world. Similarly, the Union State must enjoy all the benefits of this ideal world as you have described it.

What we want is to discuss how to live on this planet in the future. Too many problems have been piling up, and the existing institutions have been unable to resolve them. This is the gist of the initiative President of Russia Vladimir Putin put forward two years ago to convene a summit of UN Security Council permanent members. Almost everyone supported it but the West will now drag its feet. There is a preliminary agenda. We have coordinated it with our Chinese friends, while the others are reviewing it. But now everything will be put on hold. This is not about the P5 reimagining a “new Yalta,” as some claim. Under the UN Charter, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council have primary responsibility for maintaining international peace.

When we express the need for more democracy in international relations, this does not mean cancelling the UN Charter. It means stopping violations of the UN Charter. The sovereign equality of states and the requirement to respect territorial integrity and the right of nations to self-determination – it is all in the Charter. Had all its provisions been respected, this would have ensured peace and cooperation in good faith among all countries. However, the West manipulates them for its own benefit.

For example, we stand accused of violating Ukraine’s territorial integrity, starting with Crimea and Donbass. Crimea held a referendum. Everyone knew that this was an open, honest process when people expressed their will. The Americans know this too. Let me share a secret with you (I hope that no one will get cross at me). In April 2014, after the Crimea referendum then US Secretary of State John Kerry told me that they understood that this was an honest vote. However, he noted that we fast-tracked it by announcing the referendum and holding the vote in a matter of just one week. I explained to him that the Ukrainian radicals posed a direct threat at the time. All the formalities had to be completed in order to protect this territory. He suggested that we hold another referendum in the summer or autumn, announce it about two months in advance and invite foreign observers. The result would be all the same but they would be there to “bless” and verify it. This was not a matter of substance, since everyone understood where it was all heading, but about creating a favourable image for the outside world in order to be able to report that the people of Crimea cast their ballots in a referendum, while the Western “comrades” verified the results.

As for sovereignty and territorial integrity, ever since the founding of the UN in 1945, it has been debating whether sovereignty takes priority over the right to self-determination or vice-versa. A negotiating process was put into motion, paving the way for the adoption by consensus in 1970 of a Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States under the UN Charter. This is a lengthy document with an entire section on the relationship between sovereignty, territorial integrity and the right to self-determination. It says that everyone must respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states whose governments ensure the right to self-determination and represent the people living in their territory. Has the Ukrainian leadership ensured Crimea’s right to self-determination? All they did was curtail Crimea’s rights within Ukraine. Did the Petr Poroshenko regime or the current leadership represent all the people of Ukraine, including Crimea, as they pretend? No. They did not represent Donbass either. They have been ignoring all these principles.

According to the principle of indivisible security, everyone is free to choose alliances but no one can reinforce their security at the expense of others. They say that only alliances matter and nothing else. However, when it suits their interests, the principle of self-determination comes to the fore, relegating Yugoslavia’s territorial integrity into the background, as happened with Kosovo. Its self-determination took place without a referendum. They engineered the creation of a parliamentary structure of sorts, and it voted on the matter. Serbia took the case to the International Court, which issued a curious ruling, saying that consent from the central government was not required for a declaration of independence. President of Russia Vladimir Putin has quoted this landmark ruling by the International Court on multiple occasions.

Question: The West is planning to replace Russian oil and gas in the coming years. What is Russia's interest in participating in the Iran-US nuclear deal? Iran will have an opportunity to increase oil production and replace the Russian market in Europe. How ready are our Venezuelan partners for a deal with the Americans to replace Russian oil?

Sergey Lavrov: We never betray our friends in politics. Venezuela is our friend. Iran is a close state. Unlike the Americans, we do not act only out of selfish interests. If they need to "teach the Russians a lesson," then it's okay to agree with the regime in Caracas (as they called it). The United States would rather restore the programme with Iran, just to punish Russia. This reflects problems not so much with international institutions as with "liberal democracy.” As it turns out, it is not "liberal" at all, and it is not "democracy" at all.

When the leading country of the world (which the United States is) solves the problem of global, planetary importance, primarily on the basis of its own domestic interests, which are determined by two-year electoral cycles, then the biggest problems are sacrificed to these electoral cycles. What we can see now in US actions is a desire to prove that a Democratic president and administration are doing well and feel strong enough ahead of the November congressional elections. China does not understand this. What is two years? Nothing. Although the Chinese say that "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," they see the horizon of that great journey. Here, in addition to the US desire to command everything, there are no more horizons. They will act the way they need to today.

It has been noted that the Americans are running around with the issue of oil and gas, turning to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. All these countries, like Venezuela and Iran, have made it clear that when they consider new entrants to the oil market, they are committed to the OPEC+ format, where quotas for each participant are discussed and agreed upon by consensus. So far, I see no reason to believe that this mechanism will be broken in any way. No one is interested in that.

Question: What formats do you see for post-crisis settlement and intra-Ukrainian dialogue? What role might the DPR and LPR play? Ukraine’s governance and education system are permeated with Ukrainian nationalism. Several generations have grown up with this discourse. War criminals will be held accountable under criminal law. What about cultural aspects?

Sergey Lavrov: We have announced the goals we are working to achieve. As for the intra-Ukrainian dialogue, this will be up to the Ukrainians after the special operation ends – I hope, with the signing of comprehensive documents on security issues, Ukraine’s neutral status with guarantees of its security.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, commenting on our initiatives on the non-expansion of NATO, said: we understand that every country needs security guarantees. We are ready to negotiate and work them out for ourselves, for Ukrainians and Europeans outside the framework of NATO expansion. Therefore, a neutral status, security guarantees and bringing the legal framework to a civilised level with regard to the Russian language, education, the media, and laws that encourage the country’s nazification, as well as the adoption of a law prohibiting this. Most European countries have such laws, including Germany.

As for the DPR and LPR’s involvement in the all-Ukrainian dialogue, it should be a sovereign decision of the people's republics.

Question: Why was the military operation launched now and not eight years ago? At that time, a pro-Russian “anti-Maidan” movement emerged in Odessa and Kharkov, which installed the Russian flag on top of the Kharkov regional administration without firing a shot. The city supported Russia. Now these people are hiding from shelling.

Sergey Lavrov: A lot of factors influence developments at each specific historical moment. Back then, it was a shock, primarily because the West turned out to be an absolutely unreliable guarantor of the things that we supported. US President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the French leaders called Russian President Vladimir Putin and asked him not to interfere with the agreement between Viktor Yanukovych and the opposition. Vladimir Putin said that if the incumbent president was signing something, it was his right, and he had the authority to negotiate with the opposition. But the West dumped us and immediately began to support the new government because they announced an anti-Russian policy line.

People got burned alive in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa; combat aircraft fired at the centre of Lugansk. You must remember the Novorossiya movement better than anyone else. We also had a public movement for support.

We certainly relied too much on what remained of our Western colleagues’ conscience. France initiated the Normandy format; we were asked not to state categorically that we refused to recognise Petr Poroshenko’s election at the end of May 2014. The West assured us they would do everything to normalise the situation, so that Russians could live normally.

We must have trusted them because of some naivety and kindness of heart, which is something Russians are known for.

I have no doubt that lessons will be learned.

https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1805180/

Integratie en macro economie minister van de Euraziatische economische commissie die aan de ontwikkeling van een nieuw economisch systeem werkt.

https://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/544773
Translated via Yandex

“Events like this happen once a century”: Sergey Glazyev on the breakdown of epochs and changing ways of life
Is it possible to stabilize the ruble in three days and why don’t the Ukrainian”zombies” give up?

“After failing to weaken China head-on through a trade war, the Americans shifted the main blow to Russia, which they see as a weak link in the global geopolitics and economy. The Anglo-Saxons are trying to implement their eternal Russophobic ideas to destroy our country, and at the same time to weaken China, because the strategic alliance of the Russian Federation and the PRC is too tough for the United States. They don’t have the economic or military power to destroy us together, not separately,” says Sergey Glazyev, an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and former adviser to the Russian President. Glazyev spoke in an interview with BUSINESS Online about what opportunities are now opening up for the Russian economy, whether the Central Bank is pandering to the enemy and whether a new world currency will replace the dollar.

“The new world economic order is ideologically socialist”
– Sergey Yuryevich, commenting on today’s tragic events, you wrote in your telegram channel that it was necessary to read your book about the” last world war”, written about 6 years ago. How did you manage to predict everything so accurately?

— The fact is that there are long-term patterns of economic development, the analysis and understanding of which allows us to predict events that are currently taking place. We are now experiencing a simultaneous change in technological and world economic structures, while the technological basis of the economy is changing, the transition to fundamentally new technologies is taking place, and the management system is also being transformed. This kind of event occurs about once a century. However, technological patterns change about once every 50 years, and their change is usually accompanied by a technological revolution, depression, and an arms race. And world economic patterns change once every 100 years, and their change is accompanied by world wars and social revolutions. This is due to the fact that the ruling elite of the core countries of the old world economic structure prevents changes, does not take into account the emergence of more effective management systems, tries to block the development of new world leaders using them, and tries to maintain its hegemony and monopoly position by any means, including military and revolutionary ones.

Say, 100 years ago, the British Empire was trying to maintain its hegemony in the world. When it was already losing economically to the combined resources of the Russian Empire and Germany, the First World War provoked by British intelligence was unleashed, during which all three European empires self-destructed. I am talking about the collapse of tsarist Russia, the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, but this also includes the fourth-Ottoman Porto. As for Britain, it held global dominance for a while and even became the largest empire on the planet. But due to the inexorable laws of socio-economic development, the colonial world economic system, based in fact on slave labor, could no longer provide economic growth. Introduced two completely new political models of Soviet and American — has demonstrated a much greater production efficiency, because they were organized on different principles: not for private family capitalism, and the power of large transnational corporations with centralized structures of economic regulation and limitless monetary emission using Fiat currency (paper or electronic means — approx. ed.). They enabled mass production of products much more efficiently than the control systems of the colonial empires of the nineteenth century.

The emergence of social states in the USSR and the United States with centralized management systems made it possible to make a sharp leap in their economic development; In Europe, the corporate governance system was formed, unfortunately, according to the Nazi model in Germany, and also not without the help of British intelligence. Hitler, backed by British intelligence agencies and American capital, quickly deployed a centralized corporate governance system in Germany, which allowed the Third Reich to quickly take over all of Europe. With God’s help, we defeated this German (or rather, European — taking into account today’s realities) fascism. After that, two models remained in the world, which I refer to as the imperial world economic order: the Soviet and the Western (with the center in the United States). After the collapse of the Soviet Union, which failed to withstand global competition due to the fact that the directive management system was not flexible enough to meet the needs of technological progress, the United States for a while seized global dominance.

— But now this period of “American unipolar loneliness” is already passing, and probably not only thanks to Russia, but first of all to China and the Asian regions as such. Isn’t that right?

— Indeed, the hierarchical vertical structures characteristic of the imperial world economic system turned out to be too rigid to ensure continuous innovation processes and lost their comparative effectiveness in ensuring the growth of the world economy. On its periphery, a new world economic order has been formed, based on flexible management models, a network organization of production, where the state works as an integrator, combining the interests of various social groups around achieving one goal — raising public welfare. The most impressive example of such an integrated world economy today is China, which has been three times faster than the growth rate of the American economy for more than 30 years. At the moment, China already surpasses the United States in terms of output, exports of high-tech goods, and growth rates.

Another example of the model of the new world economic order, which we called integral (due to the fact that the state in it unites all social groups that differ in their interests), is India. It has a different political system, but it also has the primacy of public interests over private interests, and the State seeks to maximize growth rates in order to combat poverty. In this sense, the new world economic order is ideologically socialist. At the same time, it uses market mechanisms of competition, which makes it possible to ensure the highest concentration of resources for the technological revolution in order to ensure economic leaps based on a new advanced technological order. If we look at the growth rate since 1995, the Chinese economy has grown 10-fold, while the American economy has grown only 15 percent. Thus, it is already obvious to everyone that the pace of global economic development is currently shifting to Asia: China, India and Indochina countries already produce more products than the United States and the European Union. If we add Japan or Korea, where the management system is similar in its principles of integrating society around the goal of improving public welfare, we can say that today this new world economic order already dominates the world, and the center of reproduction of the world economy has moved to Southeast Asia. Of course, the American ruling elite cannot agree with this.

“Put up with it, I’d say…

– yes. They, like the British Empire once did, seek to maintain their hegemony in the world. The events taking place today are a manifestation of how the financial and power oligarchic elite of the United States is trying to maintain world domination. It can be said that for the past 15 years, it has been waging a global hybrid war, seeking to chaotize countries beyond its control and restrain the development of the PRC. But due to the already archaic management system, they cannot do this. The financial crisis of 2008 was such a transitional moment when the life cycle of the outgoing technological order actually ended and the process of mass redistribution of capital to a new technological order began, the core of which is a complex of nanobioengineering and information communication technologies. All countries started pumping money into their economies. The simplest thing a modern state can do is to give all businesses access to cheap long-term money so that they can adopt new technologies. But if in America and Europe such funds were spent mainly in financial bubbles and provided budget deficits, then in China this huge monetary issue was completely directed to the growth of production and the development of new technologies. There were no financial bubbles, while the ultra-high monetization of the Chinese economy did not lead to inflation, the growth of the money supply was accompanied by an increase in the output of goods, the introduction of new advanced technologies and an increase in public welfare.

Today, economic competition has already led to the fact that the United States has lost its leadership. If you remember, Donald Trump tried to contain China’s development through a trade war, but nothing came of it.

“The Americans opened a biological war front by launching the coronavirus in China”
— Why not?” Did Trump, who is used to taking risks and going all-in, not have enough determination?

— And even Trump couldn’t do it, because China has a more efficient management system, which allows us to concentrate the available production resources as fully as possible. At the same time, effective money management keeps the money issue in the contour of expanded reproduction of the real sector of the economy, focusing on financing development investments. China has reached the highest savings rate of any country: about 45 percent of GDP is invested, compared to 20 percent in the United States or Russia. This, in fact, ensures the ultra-high growth rate of the Chinese economy.

In general, the United States was doomed to defeat in this trade war, because the Middle Kingdom can produce products more efficiently and finance development cheaper. The entire banking system in China is state — owned, it operates as a single development institution, directing cash flows to expand output and develop new technologies. In the United States, the money supply is used to finance the budget deficit and is reallocated to financial bubbles. As a result, the efficiency of the US financial and economic system is 20 percent-there only one in five dollars reaches the real sector, and in China almost 90 percent (that is, almost all the yuan created by the Central Bank of the PRC) feed the contours of expanding production and ensure ultra — high economic growth.

Trump’s attempts to limit China’s development through trade war methods have failed. At the same time, they boomeranged on the United States itself. Then the Americans opened a biological war front, launching the coronavirus into China, hoping that the Chinese leadership would not cope with this epidemic and chaos would arise in China. However, the epidemic has shown poor health care effectiveness and has created chaos in the United States itself. The Chinese management system has also shown much greater efficiency here. In China, the death rate is significantly lower, and they coped with the pandemic much faster. Already in 2020, they even reached economic growth of 2 percent, while in the United States there was a decline of 10 percent of GDP (analysts noted the largest drop since World War II–ed. ). Now the Chinese have regained growth rates of about 7 percent per year, and there is no doubt that China will continue to develop confidently, expanding the production of a new technological mode.

In parallel with the trade war against China, the US special services were preparing a war against Russia, since the Anglo-Saxon geopolitical tradition considers our country to be the main obstacle to the establishment of world domination by the power and financial elite of the United States and Great Britain. I must say that the war against the Russian Federation unfolded immediately after the annexation of Crimea and after the American special services organized a coup in Ukraine. They can be said to have tricked Russia into agreeing to the American occupation of Ukraine, considering it as a temporary phenomenon. However, the Americans took root in the Square, created not only strong points, raising Nazis under their wing, but also trained the Nazi armed forces, gave the Nazis the opportunity to get a military education, trained them in their academies, and “flashed” all the Armed Forces of Ukraine with them. And for 8 years, they prepared the Armed Forces of Ukraine to fight the only enemy-Russia. While the mass media, which is also completely controlled by the Americans in Ukraine, formed an image of the enemy in the public consciousness.

In addition, the United States used the currency and financial front of a hybrid war against the Russian Federation. Already in 2014, they imposed the first financial sanctions and knocked out a significant part of Western loans from the Russian economy. Now we are seeing the next phase, when they have effectively disconnected Russia from the global monetary and financial system, where they dominate. However, all this was predicted by me 10 years ago, based on the theory of changing world economic patterns and the specific logic of the US ruling elite, focused on world domination. Anglo-Saxon geopolitics is traditionally oriented against the Russian Empire and its successors, the USSR and the Russian Federation, because, since the time of the British Empire, Russia has been seen as the main opponent of the Anlo-Saxons. All the so-called geopolitical science that was written in London was reduced, in fact, to a set of recommendations on how to destroy Russia as the dominant force in Eurasia. I mean all sorts of speculative constructions like “countries of the sea against countries of the land” and so on.

— Why did Russia interfere with the “countries of the sea” so much? After all, geographically we have never bordered on the UK.

— In this regard, a formula was invented: whoever controls Eurasia controls the whole world. Actually, applied development has already gone further. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s famous theorem says that in order to defeat Russia as a superpower, you need to tear Ukraine away from it. All this political dogma, which, it would seem, has long gone down in history, is nevertheless reproduced today in the thinking of the American political elite. I must say that there are still courses in 19th-century geopolitics at Harvard and Yale University, sharpening the brains of future American politicians against Russia. So they, in fact, jumped on this old and time-tested Russophobic stream, which has always been characteristic of Anglo-Saxon geopolitics. And, considering Russia as the main opponent of its domination in the world, they used Ukraine as an outpost, or rather, as a tool for undermining Russia, weakening it, and in the future for destroying it as a sovereign state, in accordance with Brzezinski’s proposal.

So, what is happening today was easily predicted, based on a combination of long-term patterns of economic development, which actually condemned the world to a hybrid war, and the traditional Russophobia of the Anglo-Saxon political elite. After the weakening of the PRC did not turn out head-on through a trade war, the Americans transferred the main blow of their military and political power to Russia, which they see as a weak link in the global geopolitics and economy. In addition, the Anglo-Saxons seek to establish dominance over Russia in order to implement their eternal Russophobic ideas to destroy our country, and at the same time to weaken China, because the strategic alliance of the Russian Federation and the PRC is too tough for the United States. They have neither the economic nor military power to destroy us together, not separately, so the US initially sought to put us at odds with China. They didn’t succeed. But they, taking advantage of our, I would say, complacency, seized control of Ukraine, and today they are using our fraternal republic as a weapon of war to destroy Russia, and then-to seize control of our resources in order, I repeat, to strengthen their position and weaken the position of China. In general, all this is obvious, as twice two makes four.

“The Americans will not be able to win, just as the British did not succeed in their time”
— It’s probably obvious, but not for everyone. There are many opponents of an alliance with China among the Russian elite. At least before the special operation in Ukraine, it seemed to these people that American and Western culture were clearer and closer to us than Chinese hieroglyphic wisdom, and that we would always find a common language with our “Western partners”.

— You know, back in 2015 I wrote the book ” The Last World War. The United States starts and loses, ” which you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation — everything was thought out and justified there. The United States launched a global hybrid war-starting with the Orange revolutions – to disrupt those regions of the world that it did not control — in order to strengthen its position and weaken the position of its geopolitical competitors. After the famous Munich speech of President Putin (February 2007–ed. they realized that they had lost control of Yeltsin’s Russia, and they were seriously concerned. In 2008, the financial crisis broke out and it became clear that the transition to a new technological order was beginning, and the old world economic order and the old management system no longer provide for progressive economic development. China takes the lead. Well, then the logic of the world war unfolds, only not in the forms that existed 100 years ago, but on three conditional fronts — monetary and financial (where the United States still dominates the world), trade and economic (where they have already lost the primacy to China) and information and cognitive (where the Americans also have superior technologies). They are using all three fronts to try to hold the initiative and maintain the hegemony of their corporations.

And finally, the fourth front — the biological one, which opened with the appearance of the coronavirus from the US-China laboratory in Wuhan. Today we see that a whole network of biological laboratories existed in Ukraine. So the United States has long been preparing to open a biological front for world War II.

The fifth, and most obvious, front is, in fact, the front of military operations-as the last tool for forcing the states they control to obey them implicitly. Today, the situation on this front is also getting worse. In other words, active operations are underway on all five fronts of the global hybrid war and it is possible to predict the result. The Americans will not be able to win, just as the British did not succeed in their time. Although Britain formally won the Second World War, they lost politically and economically. The British lost their entire empire, more than 90 percent of their territory, and 95 percent of their population. Two years after the Second World War, where they were the victors, their empire collapsed like a house of cards, because the other two winners — the USSR and the United States — did not need this empire and considered it an anachronism. Similarly, the world will not need American multinational corporations, the US dollar, US currency and financial technologies and financial pyramids. All this will soon be a thing of the past. Southeast Asia will become an obvious leader in global economic development, and a new world economic order will be formed before our eyes.

— To paraphrase Remarque, we can say that changes have finally come to the western front. But what signs do you see of this powerful global system’s imminent demise?

— After the Americans first seized the Venezuelan foreign exchange reserves and handed them over to the opposition, then-the Afghan foreign exchange reserves, before that — the Iranian ones, and now — the Russian ones, it became absolutely clear that the dollar ceased to be the world currency. Following the Americans, this stupidity was also committed by Europeans — the euro and the pound ceased to be world currencies. Therefore, the old monetary and financial system is living out its last days. After the US dollars that no one needs are sent back to America from Asian countries, the collapse of the global monetary and financial system based on dollars and euros is inevitable. Leading countries are switching to national currencies, and the euro and dollar are no longer foreign exchange reserves.

— How do you see the world after the disappearance of the dollar monopoly?

— We are currently working on a draft international agreement on the introduction of a new world settlement currency, pegged to the national currencies of the participating countries and to exchange-traded goods that determine real values. We won’t need American and European banks. A new payment system based on modern digital technologies with a blockchain is developing in the world, where banks are losing their importance. Classical capitalism based on private banks is a thing of the past. International law is being restored. All key international relations, including the issue of world currency circulation, are beginning to be formed on the basis of contracts. At the same time, the importance of national sovereignty is being restored, because sovereign countries are coming to an agreement. Global economic cooperation is based on joint investments aimed at improving the well-being of peoples. Trade liberalization ceases to be a priority, national priorities are respected, and each state builds a system for protecting the internal market and its economic space that it considers necessary. In other words, the era of liberal globalization is over. Before our eyes, a new world economic order is being formed — an integral one, in which some states and private banks lose their private monopoly on the issue of money, on the use of military force, and so on.

“The third scenario is catastrophic. Destruction of humanity”
— And why did you name your book “The Last World War?” What makes you hope that this global war is really the last?

— I called this world war the last, because we see that there are several scenarios of movement out of today’s crisis. The first scenario, which I have already described, is a calm and prosperous one. It consists in overcoming the US monopoly. In order to do this in the financial sector, you need to abandon the dollar. In order to overcome the monopoly in the information and cognitive sphere, we need to isolate our information space from the American one and switch to our own information technologies. Creating their own contours of economic reproduction, but without the US dollar and euro, and relying on their information technologies for managing money, the countries of the new world economic order ensure high rates of economic development, while the Western world collapses. There is a situation of collapsing financial pyramids, disorganization and a growing economic crisis, aggravated by rising inflation due to uncontrolled money issuance over the past 12 years.

The second scenario of possible development of events is similar to the one that Hitler wanted to implement during the change of previous world economic structures. This is an attempt to create a world government with a superhuman ideology. If Hitler thought of the German nation as superhumans, then the current ideologists of world domination impose a transition to a post-humanoid state on humanity. In contrast to the posthumanism of the West, the core countries of the new world economic order are characterized by a socialist ideology, albeit with respect for private interests, protection of private property and the use of market mechanisms. In China, India, Japan, and Korea, socialist ideology — or rather, a mixture of socialist ideology, national interests, and market competition-dominates. It is this mixture that forms a fundamentally new power and political elite, focused on economic development and the growth of the welfare of nations.

Western politicians, intellectuals, and businessmen have a different approach. What we are seeing today is an attempt to create a certain image of a new world order with a world government at the head, where people are driven into an electronic concentration camp. You can see from the example of restrictions during the pandemic, how it happened: all people are given tags, access to public goods is regulated by QR codes, and everyone is forced to walk in formation. By the way, in the Rockefeller Foundation scenario back in 2009, the pandemic and, in fact, everything that happened in connection with it was laid out in a stunning way — they actually predicted the future. This scenario was called Lock Step, that is, “Walk in formation”, and the Western world followed it. By sacrificing their own democratic values, people are being forced to obey commands. International organizations, including the World Health Organization, are used as a kind of base for assembling a world government that would be subordinate to private capital.

But, I must say, Donald Trump strongly hindered these plans, because he stopped the signing of the transatlantic and trans-Pacific partnership agreements, where all countries participating in the treaties sacrificed national sovereignty in all disputes with big business. And you need to understand that today any multinational corporation can act as a foreign investor, including in the United States. According to these agreements, if foreign capital is present in a business, then in a dispute with the national government, an international arbitration court is formed, it is not clear how and by whom it was drawn up. And these unelected judges, appointed, in fact, by large international businesses, resolve these disputes. In fact, the point was that the state was losing all sovereignty in regulating relations with big business. However, Trump stopped the agreement — the United States did not sign it. Thus, the process of forming a world government was stopped. This is the second alternative, and it is currently experiencing a crisis due to the collapse of the idea of globalization and the gradual abandonment of “pandemic” restrictions.

We must understand that the world government option is incompatible with a sovereign Russia, with our independence and role in the world. In the globalist scenario, the Russian Federation is considered as a territory that is intended for exploitation by Western multinational corporations. At the same time, the” indigenous population ” should serve their interests. Under this scenario, Russia disappears as an independent entity, as does China. The Western world government may incorporate some of our oligarchs into its own version of the future, but only on the second and third roles.

The third scenario is catastrophic. The destruction of humanity…

— The apocalypse everyone’s talking about?”

— Well, not all of them… But everyone is definitely afraid. By the way, about American biolabs that synthesize dangerous viruses, it was said in another book of mine, published a little later: “The Plague of the XXI century: how to avoid disaster and overcome the crisis?”.

I remember that back in 1996, when I had to work in the UN Security Council, I proposed to develop a national biosecurity concept. Because even then, almost 30 years ago, genetics was a sufficiently advanced science to synthesize viruses directed against people of a certain race or a certain gender, a certain age. This has long been possible. You can create a virus that will work only against whites or, conversely, only against blacks, only against men or only against women. Now the Americans are going further — you can see that, according to the data of our Ministry of Defense, announced the day before, American biolabs were developing viruses aimed against the Slavs. Apparently, it is now possible to make a virus against some ethnic group that has its own genetic code.

What is happening in Ukraine today is an echo of the agony of the US ruling elite, which cannot accept that it will no longer be a world leader. This is becoming clear to everyone — at least to those who are not connected with Americans by their interests and are not subject to their cognitive influence.

Here is an example. When the United States imposed anti-Russian sanctions in 2014, I asked my Chinese colleagues: “Do you think the Americans can impose sanctions on China?” They were sure not. It was said that this was impossible, because the United States depends on China as much as China depends on the United States. That is, it will be more expensive for America. Two years later, Trump launched a trade war against China. And Beijing now understands that America is an enemy that will sink the Chinese economic miracle in any way possible. Before that, my Chinese colleagues were not very convinced by my arguments, just as my book mentioned by you did not greatly influence our political and economic elite. My arguments were dismissed. Although we have said for many, many years that the dollar should be abandoned. Foreign exchange reserves should have been removed from dollar-denominated instruments, from euro-denominated instruments to gold, they should have switched to their own currency and financial system, and developed their own settlements in national currencies with partners. We have been proposing all this since the noughties, when it was already clear what the global economic development was leading to. And only now, finally, everyone has seen the light.

“The Americans brainwashed the Ukrainians and turned 150-200 thousand people into a fighting machine that works without thinking”
— Judging by the heart-rending howl that comes from the camp of liberals, as well as the events in Ukraine, not everyone has seen the light yet.

— Yes, we are faced with the fact that the Americans have managed to fool the Ukrainian people so much in 8 years that the people who resist the Russian army, the so-called Armed Forces of Ukraine, look simply zombified. They are controlled like puppets. Not Zelensky commands the Ukrainian army, not even the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the General Staff, but the Pentagon. He commands very effectively from the point of view of fighting “to the last Ukrainian soldier”, because these zombie guys do not give up. But they are in an absolutely hopeless situation. All experts have already recognized that Russia won the military special operation, that Ukraine has no chance of resistance, that the entire military infrastructure has been destroyed… the APU can only surrender in order to minimize human losses. However, Ukrainian officers (and especially, of course, nationalists) act like externally controlled zombies-they follow instructions from the Pentagon, which are received on their personal computers and special tablets.

Moreover, the Americans command their puppets from the APU, breaking them into the appropriate units. Each unit is assigned a number, and each number is assigned tasks by artificial military intelligence every day. They really turned 150-200 thousand people into a fighting machine that works without thinking, only stupidly follows all their orders. For 8 years, they have managed to force a significant part of the youth of Ukraine not just to join the ranks against Russia, but by brainwashing them into their own weak-willed tools. Not just cannon fodder, but controlled cannon fodder.

Being in an absolutely hopeless situation, surrounded, deprived of any supplies at all, they still continue a senseless war, condemning themselves to death, and dragging the surrounding civilians with them to the grave. This is a good example of how American modern technologies work. We must understand that we are facing a very powerful force. You know, we have previously heard from Russian experts and politicians that the Ukrainians themselves will suffocate economically and then crawl to us and in general where Ukraine will go without us. After all, it will not be able to ensure the reproduction of the economy without our resources and cooperation with us. Indeed, Ukraine has entered a state of economic catastrophe, as we expected, as we explained to our Ukrainian colleagues. The Ukrainian Republic has become the poorest state in Europe, along with Moldova. Due to the fact that Ukraine has severed ties with Russia, its losses amount to more than $ 100 billion. Nevertheless, this did not prevent American and British political strategists and instructors from forming a 200-thousandth army of thugs and murderers who completely inadequately represent reality and are an obedient tool of American interests.

— Aren’t there equally obedient American puppets in Russia? Was it only Ukrainians who were zombified?

— Yes, and here it should be noted that almost the same thing is happening with the Central Bank, but only on other issues.

— Before we move on to the Central Bank, let me clarify. You said that you are working on introducing a new currency. And in what format and with what team?

— We have been doing this for quite a long time, as a group of scientists. 10 years ago, at the Astana Economic Forum, we presented the report “Towards Sustainable Growth through a Fair world economic order” with a draft transition to a new global financial and monetary system, where we proposed to reform the IMF system based on the so — called special drawing rights, and on the basis of the modified IMF system-to create a world settlement currency. This idea, by the way, aroused great interest at that time: our project was recognized as the best international economic project. But in a practical sense, none of the states represented by the official monetary authorities were interested in this project, although the publications of Nursultan Nazarbayev, who proposed a new currency, followed. I think he offered altyn.

– Altyn? It is interesting.

— Yes, his article on this topic was published even in Izvestia. But negotiations and political decisions were not reached, and to this day it is more of an expert proposal. But I am sure that the current situation forces us to create new payment and settlement instruments very quickly, because the dollar will be practically impossible to use, and the ruble cannot find stability due to the incompetent policy of the Central Bank, which, in fact, acts in the interests of international speculators.

Objectively, the ruble could become a reserve currency along with the yuan and the rupee. It would be possible to switch to a multi-currency system based on national currencies. But you still need some equivalent for pricing… We are currently working on the concept of the exchange space of the Eurasian Economic Union, where one of the tasks is to form new pricing criteria. That is, if we want metal prices to be formed not in London, but in Russia, just like oil prices, then this implies the emergence of some other currency, especially if we want to act not only within the Eurasian Economic Union, but in Eurasia in a broad sense, in the center of a new world economic order, to which I refer China, India, Indochina, Japan, Korea and Iran. These are big countries that all have their own strong national interests. After the current history of confiscation of dollar reserves, I don’t think any country will want to use another country’s currency as a reserve currency. So we need some new tool. And such a tool, from my point of view, can first become a certain synthetic settlement currency, which would be built as such an aggregated index.

– Can I get some examples? What is it?

— Well, let’s say the ecu-there was such an experience in the European Union. It was built as a basket of currencies. All countries that participate in the creation of a new settlement currency must be granted the right to have their national currency in this basket. And the common currency is formed as an index, as a weighted average component of these national currencies. Well, to this we must add, from my point of view, exchange-traded commodities: not only gold, but also oil, metal, grain, and water. A sort of commodity bundle, which, according to our estimates, should include about 20 products. They, in fact, form global price proportions and therefore must participate in the basket to form a new settlement currency. And we need an international treaty that will define the rules for the circulation of this currency and create an organization like the International Monetary fund. By the way, we proposed reforming the IMF 15 years ago, but now it is already obvious that the new monetary financial system will have to be built without the West. Perhaps one day Europe will join it and the United States will also be forced to recognize it. But it is still clear that we will have to build without them, for example, on the basis of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. However, these are just expert developments that we will submit to the official bodies for consideration in the coming month.

— And at the level of the government or at the level of the president?

— We will first send it to the departments that are responsible for these issues. We will hold discussions, develop some common understanding, and then reach the political level.

“The central Bank continues its policy of pandering to the enemy”
— In your telegram channel, you write that all that remains is to nationalize the Bank of Russia. Why hasn’t it been completed yet? Here, for example, there is a point of view that Elvira Nabiullina remains in her post as a screen, but she will no longer manage anything serious. Can you refute or confirm this?

— You know, I don’t want to do conspiracy theory.

“Is this a conspiracy theory?”

— Yes, we can talk about the American deep state in conspiracy terms. In this case, conspiracy theory is a very appropriate line of thought, because in America, behind the screen of presidents and congressmen, there are some deep forces — special services. But in our Country, everything is simple. We have a president, a head of state, who has built a vertical of power. We absolutely understand how the parliament and the judicial system are formed. Here, in general, no conspiracy theory can be applied. The same goes for the Central Bank. Let me remind you that, according to the law on the Central Bank, all its property is federal property. Therefore, the Central Bank is a state structure, there is no doubt about it.

— And they always said that he was separated, as if on the sidelines.

— The Board of Directors of the Central Bank is appointed by the State Duma on the recommendation of the President. I have worked for many years as its representative in the National Banking Council, which oversees the activities of the Central Bank. I can say that there is no doubt that the Central Bank is the state body regulating monetary circulation, and it is also the main financial regulator in the country.

But there are nuances. The Constitution stipulates that the Central Bank conducts its policy independently, that is, it is independent of the government. But this does not mean that it is independent of the state. This is a government agency. Our judicial system is also officially independent of the government. Therefore, being an independent body, the Central Bank is nevertheless formed as a state regulatory body and must fulfill the tasks that are necessary for the development of our economy. To do this, it is necessary to involve the Central Bank in strategic planning. The classic theory of monetary circulation stipulates that the main goal of the monetary authorities, i.e. the Central Bank, should be to create conditions for maximizing investment. This is exactly what the banking system should do — maximize investment. Because the more investment, the more production, the higher the technical level, the lower the costs and lower the inflation, the more stable the economy. Macroeconomic stabilization in the modern economy can be achieved only on the basis of accelerated scientific and technological progress. Attempts to target inflation (such a buzzword), which the Central Bank has been practically imitating for the past 10 years, by manipulating the key interest rate against the background of the freely floating ruble exchange rate, are short — sighted, primitive and counterproductive. These measures are usually recommended by the IMF for underdeveloped countries that do not know how to think themselves.

What is inflation targeting in practice? This is an extremely primitive and internally contradictory set of measures, the application of which drives the economy into a stagflationary trap. The Central Bank threw the ruble into free floating, which is absurd from the point of view of targeting inflation in an open economy, where the exchange rate directly affects prices. And we see how the devaluation of the ruble periodically accelerates prices. In addition, they have reduced monetary policy to only one absolutely primitive tool — manipulation of the key interest rate. But the key rate is the percentage at which the Central Bank issues money to the economy and withdraws money from the economy. Its attempts to suppress inflation by raising the interest rate cannot succeed in the modern economy, because the higher the interest rate, the less credit, the less investment, the lower the technical level and competitiveness. A decline in the latter leads to a devaluation of the ruble in 3-4 years, after they raise the interest rate ostensibly to fight inflation. By letting the ruble exchange rate float freely, they essentially left it at the mercy of currency speculators.

Americans really like this policy, so they strongly praise the leadership of our Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance. After all, what is important to them? So that everything is pegged to the dollar, so that the ruble is a “junk” currency that is unstable. And this is a paradox, because the number of foreign exchange reserves of the Russian Federation has recently been 3 times more than the money supply in rubles! This means that the Central Bank could stabilize the exchange rate at any level. But he didn’t.

And who are the speculators to whom the Central Bank actually threw the ruble to the mercy? The main speculators are American hedge funds, which actually form the ruble exchange rate by manipulating the market. And the Central Bank does not notice this, or rather, it does not seem to notice. To keep them in the foreign exchange market by raising the interest rate, the Central Bank kills credit and makes our economy dependent on foreign sources of credit, and the foreign exchange financial system-dependent on the interests of speculators. It is in whose interests the Central Bank is working, hiding behind buzzwords like “inflation targeting”, which has shamefully failed in recent years in terms of real price dynamics. So we have the weakest point of the entire national security system in general — this is the Central Bank. His leadership is overwhelmed by the enemy’s cognitive weapons, in other words, zombified by them. In fact, our monetary authorities are doing what the enemy needs.

By the way, I proved mathematically and chronologically that the first wave of sanctions was imposed against Russia only after the Central Bank prepared the ground for this, namely, it let the ruble exchange rate float freely and announced that it would raise the interest rate if inflation started in the country. As soon as the Central Bank adopted this strange policy, the Americans immediately imposed sanctions. Their speculators ensured the collapse of the ruble exchange rate, which caused an inflationary wave, and the Central Bank, on the instructions of the IMF, raised the interest rate, which completely paralyzed our economy. The total damage caused by this policy has already reached 50 trillion rubles of unproduced products and approximately 20 trillion rubles of undeveloped investments. Now we need to add to this the $ 300 billion invested in foreign assets that are currently frozen — that’s the damage.

Therefore, when we talk about nationalizing the Central Bank, we are not talking about formally nationalizing it (it is already nationalized), but about bringing it into a policy that is consistent with national interests. Now his policy is contrary to the national interests. And there is no conspiracy theory here. We can see in whose interests such a policy is being implemented. The central bank raised the interest rate to 20 percent, giving bankers a dominant position in the economy. Having the most expensive and scarce resource, money, they determine which enterprise will survive, and which enterprise will die, go bankrupt, and so on. Rising interest rates make the entire Russian economy a hostage to a handful of bankers. This is the first one. Second, the Central Bank’s management allowed another collapse of the ruble exchange rate and closed the currency exchange. As a result, today banks have become the main currency speculators: they buy foreign currency for about 90 rubles per dollar, and sell it for 125 rubles. The difference settles for them as a super-profit.

— But why does the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, in your opinion, pursue a policy in the interests of the enemy?

— As I said, he does this on the recommendation of the International Monetary Fund. But his interests are also shared by our large banks, which objectively like this policy, as well as our currency and financial structures, which are also involved in manipulating the ruble exchange rate. Therefore, an influential lobby is formed around this policy, which supports this policy based on its private interests. These interests run counter to the interests of the country, they are directly opposite to them. And if you look at what the Central Bank is doing today, I have no doubt that it is continuing its policy of pandering to the enemy. It undermines macroeconomic stability by allowing international speculators to manipulate the ruble exchange rate and does not control the currency position of banks that have become currency speculators, although the Central Bank could easily withdraw banks from the foreign exchange market by fixing their currency position, prohibiting banks from buying currency. And secondly, by raising the interest rate, the Central Bank actually killed investments in the development of the Russian economy, which are very much needed right now, primarily for import substitution and for restoring economic sovereignty, while our leadership says that we should not be afraid of sanctions, because they create conditions for economic growth, for import substitution…

Look, about a third of the EU’s imports have left our market. These are huge opportunities for import substitution. If we assume that our enterprises will start developing these markets, then we will develop at a rate of 15 percent per year. But this requires loans. Import substitution cannot occur without credits. We need loans to set up production facilities, develop new technologies, and load idle production facilities. We have long developed such a strategy of advanced development at the Academy of Sciences, and we are promoting it. But, unfortunately, the Central Bank’s crazy policy, from our point of view, has quite specific influential structures that like it and they support it. That is why this policy is so stable.

“You can stabilize the ruble in three days”
– Sergey Yuryevich, if this is not a conspiracy theory, then why does the Central Bank continue to pursue such a policy? Only based on the interests of lobbyists?

– To whom the war, and to whom the mother is native. Commercial banks make a 40% profit on currency speculation. Bought for 90 rubles per dollar-sold for 125. 35 rubles — nothing easy! As a result, we are experiencing inflation, imports are becoming more expensive, and everyone sees this crazy exchange rate. Prices for all goods are rising, but banks are making super-profits.

Once again, a very influential lobby has formed around this policy, and for many people to admit the failure of such a strategy means, in fact, admitting their incompetence and even sabotage. And speculators with large banks are quite influential structures in our country that influence decision-making.

— Well, what if the first person does not get this information, it is blocked?

— When I was an adviser, I brought this information to you.

— Did they listen to you?

— Yes, there were discussions, discussed at the economic council, then it was closed so as not to annoy the officials. I don’t want to comment on it now. We see today that if we do not change monetary policy, it will be impossible for us to survive in this hybrid war. We need to counter economic sanctions now with a serious increase in domestic production. There are production facilities for this, people, raw materials, brains — too, but there is no money. Right now, the simplest thing that the state can give people is money.

— What’s your feeling?” Is there any understanding at the top?

— I think that you need to address this question directly to them.

— But many people call you almost the No. 1 person in the current situation — a public figure who can save Russia.

– Thank you for this review. I try my best.

— I just want to understand: if there was no prophet in our Homeland before, is there one now? Is this a temporary situation with the Central Bank?

— It is so prolonged, I would say, for 30 years. If we carried out a competent monetary policy in accordance with the requirements of the new world economic order, the integrated system, we would develop like China — by 10 percent a year. There were such opportunities. And we have been practically marking time for these 30 years. So it’s not even a question of whether they are listening or not, you just need to look objectively and see how China and India are developing and how we are developing. What prevented us from developing in the same way?

Moreover, the management system of the new world economic order, which I describe in my books, is universal. It worked successfully in Japan until the Americans disrupted Japanese economic growth. And even in Ethiopia, where they also began to form this management model (and achieved growth several times). In other words, this universal management model of the modern economy, focused on the growth of public welfare through investment in a new technological order, needs to be implemented. At the same time, of course, the targeted use of money implies high responsibility. Throwing money from a helicopter is not our thing.

“Not our way.

— We are talking about a targeted credit issue based on modern digital tools with a strict control system focused on investment in new technologies. We know how to do this, how to minimize the human factor by introducing digital technologies, including the digital ruble. But this is not profitable for those who still adhere to the previous strategies. They made a cash cow out of Russia, and they sucked $ 100 billion out of it to offshore companies. But now the Americans have closed offshorization for us. There is a real chance, we must use it.

— What would you advise people to do? Now the main query in Internet search engines is where to invest money in the era of turbulence. What should people do?

— First of all, do not make any sudden movements, I would say so. In any case, what exactly is not necessary — to run for dollars or euros. Because we don’t know what will happen to these currencies next. If our system is disconnected from the western one, then our banks cannot effectively invest dollars and euros anywhere, except in currency speculation. But I hope that our authorities will still curb the foreign exchange market.

In this context, what the banks did, raising the interest rate on foreign currency deposits sharply, turned out to be a clear overkill, which spurred panic. I think the ruble will stabilize if, of course, speculators are removed from the foreign exchange market and the currency is sold only to importers and people who transfer money abroad within reasonable limits to relatives or are going on a business trip according to the regulations. Otherwise, block the channels of currency leakage. Then the currency inflow will return to normal.

You know, we have a very positive trade balance. Mandatory sale of 80% of foreign currency earnings has been introduced. If you sell this revenue on the stock exchange, the volume of currency will be more than importers need. We will have a surplus of currency. This means that the ruble exchange rate will strengthen, that is, it will return to the old indicators-80 or even 70 rubles per dollar. But until the Central Bank removes speculators from the market and allows commercial banks to become such, the ruble exchange rate will not stabilize. So, unfortunately, the monetary authorities have not yet come to their senses and have not begun to implement the correct policy of macroeconomic stabilization, and I can’t give any advice other than how to invest in gold if possible (especially since the government has removed VAT from gold). There are no other real assets and safe havens.

“So you want to buy gold?”

– Buy basic necessities. Or invest in real estate, in something reliable. As for investing in dollars and euros… They have already ceased to be a currency for us. This is no longer a currency, but some obligations of other countries that may or may not be fulfilled. So we need to look for other opportunities. But I would like to emphasize once again that with the right policy, we can very quickly stabilize the ruble and even restore its purchasing power.

— And in what perspective, after all?

— It can be done tomorrow, you know? The Primakov and Gerashchenko governments did it in one week.

— Can the government do that?”

“Of course it can. To do this, in general, you need to make two decisions: fix the currency position of commercial banks and introduce currency sale standards for non-trading operations, and keep the freely convertible foreign exchange market only for trading operations. That’s all. You can write this in 15 minutes and announce it within a day, or enter it within three days, and the ruble will stabilize.