Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the Orthodox Easter service at Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, Russia, April 23, 2022. Photo taken on April 23, 2022. Sputnik / Sergei Fadeichev / Pool via REUTERS
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
I’m registering
- Putin says the West is trying to destroy Russia from within
- Western-backed assassins have tried to kill a journalist, he said
- He orders prosecutors to act quickly against “fake news”
LONDON, April 25 (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin on Monday accused the West of trying to destroy Russia, urging prosecutors to take a hard line on what he said were plots by foreign spies to divide the country and discredit the armed forces. and strength.
Speaking to Russia’s top prosecutors and monitored by the defense minister, Putin accused the West of inciting attacks on Russian journalists.
He said the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, the Federal Security Service (FSB), prevented an assassination attempt on Monday by a “terrorist group” of a prominent Russian television journalist, later named by state media as Vladimir Solovyov.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
I’m registering
“They have turned to terror – to the preparation of the murder of our journalists,” Putin told the West.
Soloviev is one of Russia’s most famous television and radio journalists and an outspoken talk show host, whose guests often denigrate Ukraine and justify Moscow’s actions there.
Putin, a former KGB spy who has ruled Russia as a top leader since the last day of 1999, did not immediately provide evidence to support his statements, and Reuters was unable to immediately verify the allegations.
Soloviev could not be immediately reached for comment.
Putin said the West had realized that Ukraine could not defeat Russia in a war, so it moved on to a different plan – the destruction of Russia itself.
“Another task has come to the fore: to split Russian society and destroy Russia from within,” Putin said. “Did not work.”
Putin said foreign media organizations and social media had been used by Western spies to organize provocations against Russia’s armed forces.
Prosecutors must respond quickly to fake news and reports that undermine order, Putin said, without giving specific examples.
“They are often organized mainly from abroad, organized in different ways – either the information comes from there or the money,” Putin said. Prosecutors need to fight extremism “more actively,” Putin said.
Just days after ordering the invasion of Ukraine, Putin signed a law sentencing him to 15 years in prison for spreading deliberately “fake” military news.
Russia says the Western media has provided too partial a story about the war in Ukraine, which largely ignores Moscow’s fears about NATO enlargement and what it sees as the persecution of Russian-speakers in Ukraine.
Ukraine, which denies discrimination against Russian-speakers, did not respond immediately to Putin’s statement.
The state news agency RIA reported that members of a neo-nationalist far-right group known as National Socialism / the White Force had planned to assassinate Soloviev on Ukraine’s orders.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 killed thousands, displaced millions more and raised fears of a wider confrontation between Russia and the United States, arguably the world’s two-largest nuclear powers.
Putin says a “special military operation” in Ukraine is necessary because the United States has used Ukraine to threaten Russia, and Ukraine is to blame for the genocide of Russian-speaking people.
Ukraine says it is fighting a seizure of land from Russia and that Putin’s allegations of genocide are nonsense.
Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com
I’m registering
Reuters report; edited by Guy Falconbridge
Our standards: Thomson Reuters’ principles of trust.
Add Comment