Putin says Russia may fall apart

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the West wants to "dissolve the former Soviet Union and its main part, the Russian Federation". In this case, Putin is convinced, Russians could disappear as an ethnic group.

If we go down this path, I think that the fate of a lot of the peoples of Russia, and above all, of course, the Russian people, may change dramatically, well, just dramatically. I don't even know if such a ethnos as the Russian people can be preserved as it is today. So there will be some Muscovites, Ural residents, and so on. These plans were all in the plans, they're laid out on paper," Putin said in an interview with the propaganda television channel Rossiya 1.

According to Putin, the West has long harboured such thoughts and Russia has allegedly turned a blind eye to this for a long time in order to build partnerships.

We simply tried not to talk about it when building relations for reasons of partnership. But it is all there, it is all written, it is all written on paper. And now, when their attempts to remake the world exclusively for themselves after the collapse of the Soviet Union led to this situation, of course, we are forced to respond to it - summed up the Russian president.

Let us note that Russia is home to about 190 peoples, most of whom, each in his time, were annexed to the Russian Federation by force, fraud or manipulative means.