Interview with Akhmed Zakayev

Excerpt:

the worst part of it is not who Putin is, or what he does, the worst part of it is that this person, with all his cruelty and his anti-national policy, meets a need of Russian society. That is the really depressing thing. It is only now that some glimmer of understanding has started to appear – a glimmer of understanding about what this man is doing to Russians, to Russia, to the Russian state. Maybe something will start changing now. But, unfortunately, to this day he has met a need of Russian society – the ratings, even if they were exaggerated, show this. The self-censorship that journalists have subjected themselves to...Of course, it is fear - it cannot be explained otherwise. But the Russian public cannot cope on their own with this phenomenon, with Putinism. And the West as usual is not ready to help or even to give moral support to those who are trying to oppose this phenomenon. There is nothing new in this either – it was the same in Soviet times too. The West strengthened Stalin, and the regimes that followed were also supported by the West. And today with this oil and gas… Europe is always in need of something. It will always need something from Russia. But the thing is that as long as they are going to play along to the tune of these regimes and give them nourishment, the problems Europe has, instead of being resolved, will only become more acute. This is something the West does not understand. As long as the problem of the Russian regime is not solved, the problems in other parts of the world will not be solved either – be they in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, with Al-Qaida or in the North Caucasus.