Over centuries, Russia’s opponents have been saying that this country is impossible to conquer and can only be destroyed from within, Vladimir Putin said at his annual press conference on Thursday.
"I would like to reiterate what our opponents have been saying for centuries: Russia is impossible to conquer, it can only be destroyed from within. Which was successfully done during World War One, to be more precise, as a result of it, and also in the 1990s when the Soviet Union was destroyed," the head of state said in response to a question by a BBC reporter.
According to Putin, this was done by those who "served other, foreign interests not related to the interests of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation."
Western countries have given no evidence to prove allegations about Russian blogger Alexey Navalny’s possible poisoning, Putin said.
"You speak about a man who was allegedly poisoned. We have issued numerous official inquiries from the Russian prosecutor’s office asking for any documents proving the poisoning. Not a single paper, not a single evidence of this Novichok, or whatever you call it," he said
According to the Russian leader, Moscow suggested sending Russian specialists "there to work together." "I personally told the French president and the German chancellor: Let our specialists work, let us take sample, check grounds to open a criminal case. Nothing in response. Nothing," he said, describing the contacts on this matter.
"Stop talking about it. Let us turn over this page, if you have nothing to tell us," he noted.
Alexey Navalny was rushed to a local hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk on August 20, 2020, after collapsing on a Moscow-bound flight from Tomsk. He fell into a coma and was put on a ventilator in an intensive care unit. On August 22, he was airlifted to Berlin and admitted to the Charite hospital. On September 2, the German government claimed that the blogger had been affected by a toxic agent belonging to the Novichok family. Russia’s authorities pointed out that no poisonous substances had been detected in Navalny’s system prior to his transfer to Berlin and repeatedly expressed readiness for all-round cooperation to investigate this case.
The amount of organizations designated as foreign agents in Russia is the same as in the United States, but the punishment for those who violate it is lighter, Putin pointed.
"A total of 74 organizations out of 200,000 NGOs have been labeled as foreign agents here, that’s 0.034%, the same as in the US, but there aren’t any tough regulations [here] like those in the US, which particularly include criminal responsibility," he highlighted.
"If you don’t stop your activities there [in the US], you may face criminal prosecution and up to five years in prison. It can happen even when you end your activities and shut down your organization, you can’t escape criminal responsibility. [You’d face a] five-year term. We don’t have anything like that here. We don’t ban the activities of such organizations. We only want the organizations involved in domestic political activities to clearly state what their sources of funding are. That’s all. And they can continue their work. Our law is far more liberal," Putin emphasized. He added, however, that there were some issues with the law, particularly related to the understanding of the notion of "political activities" and rules regulating this work.
And in the end, the choice of the organization of society and the state will be determined by the Russian people, and not by those whom you serve today, Putin ansvered to BBC correspondent.
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