Putin has put down a marker for Central Asia, in his latest speech. Here are some money quotes:
Our objectives on the international stage are very clear – to ensure the security of our borders and create favourable external conditions for the resolution of our domestic problems. We are not inventing anything new and we seek to make use of all that European civilisation and world history has accumulated.
Also certain is that Russia should continue its civilising mission on the Eurasian continent. This mission consists in ensuring that democratic values, combined with national interests, enrich and strengthen our historic community.
We consider international support for the respect of the rights of Russians abroad an issue of major importance, one that cannot be the subject of political and diplomatic bargaining. We hope that the new members of NATO and the European Union in the post-Soviet area will show their respect for human rights, including the rights of ethnic minorities, through their actions.
Countries that do not respect and cannot guarantee human rights themselves do not have the right to demand that others respect these same rights.
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Don’t like the bottom three paragraphs one bit. Given that he’s absolutely full of it when talking about democracy and that Russia’s historic civilizing mission (at least under the Soviet Union, the collapse of which he called a great tragedy) has been to subdue and dominate its neighbors, I’d say we’ve got a problem on our hands.
Unless of course he starts acting like human rights aren’t just something for Russians. God knows where he gets off preaching to the world on that or demanding a pass for his creeping neo-imperialism. I understand advocating for the rights of Russian minorities (they are unfairly kicked around all over the former USSR), but he’s waxing expansionist.