The Kremlin said on Thursday that many people in Russia were proving “traitors” and pointed to those who were quitting their jobs and leaving the country.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the comments a day after President Vladimir Putin issued a stern warning to Russian “traitors” he said the West wanted to use as a “fifth column” to destroy the country.
The Kremlin leader lashed out at Russians who he said were more mentally in tune with the West than Russia, and said the Russian people would quickly be able to tell the difference between traitors and patriots.
“Of course they (the West) will try to bet on the so-called fifth column, on traitors — on those who earn their money here but live there. They live, not in the geographical sense, but in the sense of their thoughts, their servile thinking,” he told government ministers three weeks after Russia’s war with Ukraine.
“Any people, and especially the Russian people, will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors, and just spit them out like a mosquito that accidentally flew into their mouths.”
The venomous tone was striking even for Putin, who for years has been targeting domestic adversaries and delivering bitter tirades against the West.
Russian opposition politician Mikhail Kasyanov, who served as Putin’s first prime minister in the early 2000s, condemned the comments on Twitter.
“Putin is stepping up his actions to destroy Russia and is essentially heralding the start of mass repressions against those who do not agree with the regime,” he said. “This has happened in our history before, not just ours.”
See images of anti-war protests in Ukraine around the world
Putin claimed that the West was trying to divide Russia and provoke a civil confrontation with the help of its “fifth column”. “And there is one goal: the destruction of Russia,” he said, adding that Russia would rebuff such efforts.
“I am convinced that this natural and necessary self-cleaning of society will only strengthen our country, our solidarity, cohesion and readiness to face any challenge”.
For Russian experts, the message was chilling.
“Putin, in an Orwellian way, divided Russia’s citizens into clean and unclean,” wrote Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst.
A law passed on March 4 makes public actions aimed at “discrediting” the Russian army illegal, and prohibits the dissemination of fake news or the “public dissemination of deliberately false information about the use of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation”.
Thousands of people were detained while protesting the war, which Russia calls a “special military operation” to demilitarize and “denazify” its democratic neighbour.
Several major independent media organizations have suspended their operations.
Russia has opened at least three criminal cases against people for spreading what it calls fake news about the Russian army on Instagram and other social media, the Investigative Committee law enforcement agency added on Wednesday.
Source: CNN Brasil
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