Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev gave a wide-ranging interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta last week that’s worth reading for anyone who’s interested in Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine and the contours of the global systemic transition that it accelerated. The Saker’s team of translators helped bring it to the attention of the English-speaking audience by refining the interview’s machine translation before publishing it on his site. The purpose of the present piece is to analyze the highlights of Patrushev’s interview in order to help put everything into its appropriate strategic context. What follows is a collection of key quotes and an interpretation of each, after which a few words will conclude the analysis.

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1. “Washington has been and is causing crises in its quest to consolidate its hegemony, resisting the collapse of the unipolar world. The United States is doing everything to ensure that other centers of the multipolar world do not even dare to raise their heads, and our country not only dared, but publicly declared that it will not play by the imposed rules. They tried to force Russia to give up its sovereignty, identity, culture, and independent foreign and domestic policy. We have no right to agree with this approach.”

* The US is waging a multidimensional Hybrid War on Russia as punishment for its leadership’s refusal to sacrifice their objective national interests in support of America’s. This campaign is being carried out from a position of desperation, not strength, since the US knows that the only alternative is to accept its declining hegemony. The emerging Multipolar World Order is irreversible and inevitable, but its pace can still be slowed down due to American meddling. Nevertheless, Russia’s resistance to this grand strategic plot shows that progress will continue to be made despite the US’ obstacles.

 

2. “In an attempt to suppress Russia, the Americans, using their proteges in Kiev, decided to create an antithesis of our country, cynically choosing Ukraine and trying to divide essentially a single people. Having failed to offer anything positive to Ukraine, even before the 2014 coup d’etat, Washington promoted the idea of exclusivity of the Ukrainian nation and hatred of everything Russian.”

* The US is indeed waging a proxy war on Russia through Ukraine, which has been its Neo-Nazi vassal state since the 2014 coup. The project to artificially construct an “anti-Russia” there is the epitome of Hybrid Warfare since it involved radical socio-cultural engineering of that targeted people. The result has been disastrous for them though since it directly led to Russia’s special operation.

 

3. “However, history teaches that hatred can never become a reliable factor of national unity. If there is anything that unites the peoples living in Ukraine today, it is only the fear of the atrocities of nationalist battalions. Therefore, the result of the policy of the West and the Kiev regime controlled by it can only be the disintegration of Ukraine into several states.”

* Observers shouldn’t skim past Patrushev’s geopolitical prediction of Lenin’s unnatural mini-empire crumbling into a number of smaller states along the Donbass model. This adds credence to the scenario that more such independence referenda will be held in the liberated areas of the former Ukraine currently under the protection of the Russian Armed Forces (RAF).

 

4. “Most of the Ukrainians who have come to the West believe that Europeans should support them and provide for them, and when they are forced to work, they start to rebel. Representatives of the criminal community who have escaped from Ukraine will try to occupy niches that are favorable to them, put local criminal groups under control, which will undoubtedly be accompanied by an increase in crime in Europe.”

* Per the deep insight first shared by Ivy League scholar Kelly M. Greenhill in her 2010 book on the matter (which was summarized in an academic paper that she published at that time for Calhoun’s Naval Postgraduate School), these Ukrainian refugees veritably represent so-called “Weapons of Mass Migration” (WMM) that are destabilizing those societies that received them. Europe will eventually rue its decision to participate in the US-led proxy war on Russia through Ukraine once this all gets worse.

 

5. “Against the background of anti-Russian sanctions, the world is gradually plunging into an unprecedented food crisis. Tens of millions of people in Africa or the Middle East will be on the verge of starvation because of the West. To survive, they will rush to Europe. I am not sure that Europe will survive the crisis.”

* Europe’s potentially complete collapse might not be caused by Ukrainian WMM but by those from the Global South who’ll flee to the continent for refugee from their impending food crises. It truly is difficult to imagine how Europe would survive this literally civilizational crisis that’s on the verge of happening. Whatever its ultimate outcome may be, Europe will probably be unrecognizable by the time it all ends.

 

6. “The growth of ultra-right sentiment is probable, fueled by tens of thousands of trained and combat-experienced Ukrainian radicals who have already found a common language with European fans of Hitler.”

* Amidst its civilization’s WMM-driven existential crisis that was described in the preceding point, Europe will also likely be forced to confront internal ultra-right threats to its security. This amounts to blowback from the bloc’s cultivation of such forces over the past decade as anti-Russian proxies.

 

7. “The American and European military-industrial complex is exultant, because thanks to the crisis in Ukraine, it is flush with orders. It is not surprising that, unlike Russia, which is interested in the speedy completion of a special military operation and minimizing losses on all sides, the West is determined to fight even to the last Ukrainian.”

* The US-led West’s military-industrial complex (MIC) has a stake in indefinitely perpetuating the proxy war on Russia through Ukraine. This is obviously disastrous for the Ukrainian people, who are exploited as proxies to be thrown into the RAF’s meatgrinders in Eastern and Southern Ukraine. The MIC will nevertheless do everything to keep the conflict raging for as long as possible since it’s very profitable.

 

8. “At one time, Hitler’s fascism dreamed of destroying the entire Russian population, and today its followers, according to the precepts of Hitler, are blasphemously trying to do this with the hands of the Slavs. Russia will not allow this to happen.”

* The present conflict can be conceptualized as a continuation of World War II with respect to the US-led West’s support of fascist forces as its primary anti-Russian proxy. That role was played by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany back then while today it’s being played by post-coup Neo-Nazi Ukraine.

 

9. “America has long divided the entire world into vassals and enemies. In the United States, people are taught from childhood that America is a shining city on a hill, and the rest of humanity is just a testing ground for experiments and a resource appendage.”

* “American Exceptionalism” is a discredited supremacist ideology that can objectively be described as a variant of fascism, even a precursor of the globally infamous Nazi strain that developed in the run-up to World War II. Regrettably, both forms of fascism continue to destabilize the world.

 

10. “Russia has chosen the path of full protection of its sovereignty, firm defense of national interests, cultural and spiritual identity, traditional values and historical memory. Our spiritual and moral values allow us to remain ourselves, to be honest with our ancestors, to preserve the individual, society and the state. Europeans, for example, made a different choice. They have adopted so-called liberal values, although in reality they are neoliberal ones. They promote the priority of the private over the public, individualism that suppresses love for the Fatherland, and the gradual withering away of the state. It is now obvious that with such a doctrine, Europe and European civilization have no future.”

* Russia’s “Democratic Security” policy, which refers to counter-Hybrid Warfare tactics and strategies, is comprehensive. It importantly concerns those same socio-cultural aspects like religion, identity, values, and history that are nowadays weaponized by the US-led West. The Eurasian Great Power’s trajectory in this respect is the complete opposite of its European rivals’, who’ve openly embraced self-destructive socio-cultural policies that will inevitably lead to their civilization’s collapse. The bloc is destined for a dystopian post-modern future, but while Russia’s own might not be utopian, it’ll still present its people with a better chance to socially and spiritually flourish.

 

11. “Don’t forget that all historical upheavals start with the spread of popular but potentially destructive ideas. Think of the French Revolution. From its misinterpreted slogans emerged the tyranny of Napoleon, who drowned half of Europe in blood but broke his teeth on Russia…A little over a hundred years later the ideology of Nazism appeared.”

* The Ukrainian Conflict fits neatly in Europe’s historical continuum by representing the latest example of a destructive ideology coming to power in the continent and consequently throwing it into chaos. It’s therefore not unique since it follows a certain logic. Similarly, the ultimate outcome of the Ukrainian Conflict will likely be the same: Russia saving Europe from itself.

 

12. “Our country has historically played a special role in shaping not only the geopolitical, but also the moral climate in the world.”

* The contrast between Russia’s healthy/moderate/reasonable conservatism and the US-led West’s hyper-liberal ideology extends credence to the innuendo that Russia is shaping today’s moral climate.  

 

13. “Trying to support its economy in a constant pre-crisis state, the United States is actively pumping its banks, businesses and the population with money secured by government obligations. The result was high rates of inflation in America and Europe. At the same time, the US external debt exceeded $30 trillion. Yet for some reason Americans are discussing a possible default of Russia. It’s time for them to default. To overcome the negative consequences of past policies and create new opportunities for enrichment, United States is creating a global crisis. That is, they want to solve their problems at the expense of the rest of the world, by the way, primarily at the expense of Europe.”

* The Ukrainian Conflict isn’t just an ideological and geopolitical one, but also an economic-financial conflict. Patrushev is correct in his description of the US’ counterproductive policies that would have led to it defaulting long ago if it wasn’t the center of the global financial system. Be that as it is, its previously hegemonic role is rapidly declining in the face of the ongoing global systemic transition to multipolarity, which was an influencing factor behind why it’s weaponizing chaos in Europe through its proxy war on Russia through Ukraine. There are other motives as well, of course, but the economic-financial ones were major and deserve to be studied more in detail by interested observers.

 

14. “For any national financial system to be sovereigntized, its means of payment must have intrinsic value and price stability, without being pegged to the dollar. Our experts are working on a project proposed by the scientific community to create a double-circuit monetary and financial system. In particular, it is proposed to determine the value of the ruble by having it be backed by both gold and a basket of commodities, and to put the ruble exchange rate in line with the real purchasing power parity.”

* Since the global financial system is changing throughout the course of the emerging Multipolar World Order, it therefore naturally follows that Russia seriously explores the best options for most effectively ensuring its interests during this ongoing transition. While nothing too significant has officially been implemented into policy as of yet, it’s still very encouraging that Patrushev revealed that Russian experts are actively working on this, which suggests that some important announcements might be made soon.

 

15. “They do not contradict the economic theories but rather Western economics textbooks. The West has unilaterally established an intellectual monopoly on the optimal structure of society and has been using it for decades.”

* Responding to the interviewer’s question of whether his ideas contradict economic theories, Patrushev crucially reminded them that the West’s intellectual monopoly on the optimal structure of society is one of the Hybrid War means through which it established its now-declining hegemony.

 

16. “Let me remind you that the shock reforms of the 1990s in our country were carried out strictly according to American guidelines. The fascination of our entrepreneurs who emerged from that era with market mechanisms alone, without taking into account the specifics of our country, is a risk factor.”

* As one of Russia’s top security officials, it’s worthwhile heeding Patrushev’s warning that the blind imposition of foreign economic-financial models without consideration for the specifics of the country in which they’re being implemented is a major national security risk, potentially even an existential one.

 

17. “Russia is moving from the European market to the African, Asian and Latin American markets. We give priority attention to the Eurasian Economic Union whose importance is growing in the current conditions. We are stepping up cooperation with the BRICS and SCO countries, which bring together about three and a half billion people on the planet.”

* The unprecedented US-led sanctions forced Russia to finally make up for lost time across the Global South after practically neglecting this majority of humanity in the three decades since the USSR’s collapse. Its plans to closely cooperate with BRICS and the SCO show that the Russian leadership finally appreciates the global strategic importance of this part of the world.

 

18. “I am sincerely convinced that we cannot develop successfully without a clear understanding by the whole society of our national goals and objectives, the full depth of our spiritual and historical identity. Therefore, every citizen of our country, every Russian, from the very childhood should know and understand what we all live and work for as a single people, and what we strive for.

* Russia’s “Democratic Security” policy would be incomplete without incorporating a major role for the country’s educational process. It’s of the highest importance to inoculate the next generation from the US-led West’s ideological viruses. Reforming curricula to emphasize Russian Civilization’s unique spiritual and historical identity is therefore of urgent necessity in the current Hybrid War context.  

 

19. “The West continues to act in line with the inhuman doctrine of the ‘golden billion’, which implies a significant reduction in the world’s population in various ways. To do this, the West has maliciously created an empire of lies that implies the humiliation and destruction of Russia and other undesirable states.”

* Patrushev’s warning about the US-led West’s global depopulation plot mirrors foreign spy chief Sergey Naryshkin’s earlier warning about the Davos World Order. These should be taken seriously since the supremacist ideologues formulating Western policy right now do indeed plot their enemies’ total destruction in ways that can be described as genocidal such as by bombing and starving civilians.

 

20. “Destroying our education by imposing so-called progressive models of education is as strategic a task for Westerners as, for example, bringing NATO closer to our borders. In fact, there is nothing progressive there. In the United States, for example, many people already say that you should sing and dance in math classes, because solving problems and equations oppresses and discriminates against someone. We don’t need such ‘progress’.”

* So-called “wokeness” is indeed a completely chaotic ideology that’s been weaponized by the US-led West as part of their full-spectrum Hybrid War on Russia. The infiltration and subsequently viral spread of the false “values” associated with it into targeted societies is meant to destroy them from within exactly as has already happened to the US’ and EU’s, whose elite see themselves as the puppeteers pulling the ideological strings of their proxies in order to perpetually divide and rule their rivals.

 

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In view of the above highlights that were analyzed from Patrushev’s latest interview, it’s clear that this security chief has a very solid understanding of all dimensions of his expertise, especially the geopolitical ones as well as those connected to economic and “Democratic Security”. The US-led West’s War on Russia is historically unprecedented considering how contemporary technology and the evolving globalized economy have created additional opportunities for it to destabilize its target. Nevertheless, this civilization-state is still strongly resisting its rivals’ efforts to subjugate it into being their “junior partner” and resultantly sacrificing its objective national interests. Russia will continue to defend itself from this Hybrid War and thus inspire others across the Global South to do so too.