Darya Melekhova on Vesti.FM: national question is being used as an instrument of information war against Russia

Now it is not a secret for anyone that the West has waged and continues to conduct an information war against Russia, an analyst of Vestnik Kavkaza, Darya Melekhova, told today in a live broadcast of the National Question program on Vesti. FM, describing the features of using the national question against our country now and in a historical retrospective.

First of all, she drew attention to the fact that the national question has long been an instrument of the information wars against Russia, the main goal of which is to weaken the rival country in the world arena.

Darya Melekhova confirmed this statement with the following historical facts. "The collapse of the Russian Empire and the revolutionary events of 1917 provided an excellent opportunity for the West to stimulate the separatist and centrifugal tendencies in all national regions of the former Russian Empire - the Baltic States, Ukraine, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia. The Western intelligence services agents sought to recruit local nationalists so they could serve the Western interests, in particular, Great Britain’s,’’ the expert of Vestnik Kavkaza said.

In the 90s, after the collapse of the USSR, the problem of separatism became acute in Russia. Chechnya and Dagestan, where there were the main centers of separatism. The separatist sentiments were also present in Tuva, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Yakutia and Buryatia, "the expert said.

In addition, the country was in an unstable international environment. "At that time there were powerful disintegration tendencies throughout the post-Soviet space, nationalist movements in the former republics, there was a break in economic, cultural and military-political ties, as well as a violation of a single legal field," Darya Melekhova said, noting that all these factors served as catalysts for separatism in Russia itself.

The information war is still ongoing. ”The opponents of our country are concentrating their efforts on several fronts - inciting interethnic and inter-religious strife, organizing and supporting separatist sentiments, and focusing on the Caucasus and Tatarstan. Work is being carried out in Siberia and the Far East. The ideas of disintegrating Russia are being spread, such as ‘’Stop feeding these or those’’, ‘’Stop feeding Moscow’’, or ‘’Stop feeding Caucasus’’’’, - the expert listed.

However, since the 2000s, the tendencies toward separatism in Russia are gradually dwindling. "According to a poll conducted by the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center, Russians have become less likely to face manifestations of national and religious intolerance and, on the whole, have become less afraid of interethnic and interreligious conflicts. Now, the most residents of the country are concerned about current socio-economic problems, "Darya Melekhova concluded.