Josep Borrel shares my opinion about Russia

"Russia has never been able to become a nation. It was always an empire with the tsar, with the Soviets, and now with Putin. It is a constant of Russia, and its political identity, and as a result a threat to his neighbours – and particularly to us."

(The Guardian. 24.12.2023)

All right, is this case I am obliged to publish my speech in Italian Parliament on 11.12.2023, about the Russian identity and Russian Empire.

"Russia has always been an empire"

In 1900, a Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov wrote about the fallacy Russian Orthodox Church"s perpetrated around Christianity in Russia. He writes that the Russian Church is misleading people. And that followers of the religion of the "Dyromalyays", who worship the Hole in the Izba, do their beliefs more justice. Their ritual being, having drilled a hole in the wall of a hut in some dark corner, they put their lips to it and repeat many times: "My izba, my hole, save me!"

They reduced the object of worship to an oversimplification, they were wildly insane, but at least they did not mislead anyone; they said so about the hut: hut, and they rightly called the spot they drilled in its wall just that — a hole.

But the Russian Orthodox Church calls "the doctrine of Christ" a worldview and practices, that have nothing to do with Christianity.

"This deception is inexcusable," writes a Russian philosopher.

And if today the world has understood that the Russian Orthodox Church is a traditional anti-human organisation of punitive bodies of special services, supporting terrorism, massacres and invasion wars, with the concept of "Russians", "Russian people", "citizens of the Russian Federation" and of course, the structure of the Russian Federation itself, there is a huge deception, misleading the world community.

On 27 November in Moscow XXV World Russian People"s Council has started, devoted to the theme "The present and future of the Russian world".

It was addressed by Putin and Patriarch Kirill, aka FSB officer Gundyaev.

At this gathering, there was a shift in gears; the blurred image – a definition that there is a state of the Russian Federation and the people of Russia, that has been pedalled for the last 32 years, has been dispelled and a clear formulation has been established.

Russia is an empire. Russian is not a nation, not a nationality, not an ethnos, not belonging to the Orthodox religion. And not even an ideology.

Russian is a worldview.

Everyone who shares its worldview is Russian.

Russia has always been an empire, and will always be an empire.

Never has Russia been a republic or a federation.

Only an empire.

You will ask: "What about 1991? What about Boris Yeltsin, who proclaimed the Russian Federation a democratic republic"?

What about the statements of Russian liberals who still claim that Russia was a democratic republic under Yeltsin?

That is an inexcusable lie. Misrepresentation.

Putin and Gundyaev have finally reduced everything to a hut and a hole.

They called things by their proper names.

Yes, Russia, for many centuries, has been an empire, and thus an entity that takes other people"s lands, appropriates them, and destroys the peoples in the territories it conquers.

To be Russian is to admit that you share the imperial worldview, that you put the Russian at the centre of everything, regardless of nationality or origin.

Everything fell into place after this statement.

And the question immediately arises addressed to Russian liberals, who claim that they built a beautiful democratic Russia in 1991, but Putin came and brought terror with him.

Russian liberals have served the most disgusting role because they have misled both the Russian people and the international community.

They did not call things by their proper names, like Putin, they did not say "we have always been an empire and we remain an empire".

They said to the West, "we are a democratic republic".

To be a "democratic republic" was, however, hindered by the massacres they organised in the Caucasus from the first day of the creation of the Russian Federation — in Georgia and Chechnya.

And thus they preferred to simply lie and hide their hand manoeuvres from the West.

The first person who called things by their names, i.e. directly called the Russian Federation an empire in December 1991, was the President of Independent Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia.

Russia staged a coup against Zviad and installed its protégé, a criminal and KGB general, Eduard Shevardnadze. The unprecedented campaign of discrediting and vilification sold to the West is all on the conscience of Russian liberals.

Unprecedented in their cruelty, gangs sponsored by Russia, organised a real terror for us in Georgia.

On 21 December it will be 32 years since the beginning of the massacre that was carried out in Tbilisi by the forces of the so-called Russian Federation.

31 December will mark exactly 30 years since the liquidation of our first President Zviad Gamsakhurdia. The investigation of his assassination is still not concluded.

Friends, today, on December 11th, 1994, the so-called democratic Russian Federation launched a full-scale military operation against the independent state of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

Two fierce wars. The first of which the citizens of the Chechen Republic won, a Peace Treaty was signed in the Kremlin between the two independent states — the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic, (thus Russia recognised the independence of the Chechen Republic). But three years later Russia attacked Chechnya with even greater ferocity and occupied its territory.

If things were called by their proper names — that this was an imperial conquest and genocide of the Chechen people — after all, 300,000 civilians were killed!

But it is on the conscience of Russian liberals that they did not call this massacre an "imperial conquest"; instead, they called it "the establishment of constitutional order", and their state they called — not an empire, but a "democratic state".

Just as in the case of Georgia, Russian liberals did not call Russia an empire when it staged a military coup in our country and occupied Abkhazia and Samachablo.

But today Putin himself has removed that reticence and dispelled the fog.

"Russia has always been an empire and will always be an empire".

It will take back its lands that once rightfully belonged to the Russian Empire, Putin promised. That means he has set out to take back the Baltic States, Poland and Finland. It means that the Soviet Empire will also recollect and remind itself of its socialist conquests in the lands of Czechoslovakia, the Balkans, Bulgaria and Hungary.

We only want our own back, Putin explains sincerely.

He challenges the West: "here, I have revealed my intentions to you, I am not making a mess. We are the Empire, we have always done it, we are Russians.

I have told you this openly, I am not playing hide and seek and I am not calling things by other names like Russian liberals".

And now he is expecting an adult and coherent response from the West, as is customary in his bandit circle.

Now the West will not be in a position to say that it misheard him or get out by claiming that it was lied to by the Russian liberals.

The ball is now in the Western court – acknowledge or pretend to play dumb.

The West played dumb at the expense of the lives of Chechens, Georgians and Ukrainians – this is a separate issue to be addressed with the West and with the Russian liberals who perpetrated this big scam on our lives.

The west preferred to keep talking to Moscow while Moscow was killing our people.

The West preferred to betray Zviad Gamsakhurdia and Dzhokhar Dudayev.

We are in pain, our wounds bleed. Our dead look at us.

The West did not want to hear us, did not want to help us.

But now the West has been informed, that on their doorstep is not a Christian country, but a hut with a hole. And it hides it no longer.