There is no free civil society without the country's sovereignty - Putin
Russian President Vladimir Putin told how to distinguish real civilians from those imposed from outside.
He stated this today, speaking at a meeting of the Valdai Club, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“How to recognize whether this is truly the voice of the people, or whether these are behind-the-scenes whispers. Or someone’s noisy screams that are completely unrelated to our people, sometimes turning into hysterics. We have to face the fact that sometimes they try to replace a genuine public demand with the interests of some narrow social group, or even, frankly, with external forces,” Putin said.
In his opinion, true democracy and civil society cannot be imported.
“They cannot be the product of the activities of foreign well-wishers, even if they supposedly want what is best. In theory, this is possible, but I have not encountered this yet, and I don’t really believe in it. We see how such imported models of democracy function. It is just a shell, a fiction, devoid of internal content, even a semblance of sovereignty. Where such schemes are implemented, the people are not really asked for anything. And leaders are nothing more than vassals for whom the master decides everything,” Putin said.
The President believes that even sincere public organizations that are funded from abroad remain “alien, outsiders and, ultimately, reflect the interests not of Russian citizens, but of their foreign trustees.”
“A strong civil society is nation-oriented and sovereign. It grows from the depths of people’s life and can take different forms. This is a phenomenon of traditions and culture of a specific environment, and not a product of abstract transnational reason, behind which other people’s interests are hidden,” Putin concluded.
There can be no free civil society without a country's sovereignty – Putin