Nikolai Patrushev and Elena Chernenko - Terrorism, Ukraine and the American threat: the view from Russia
Former Russian spy
chief Nikolai Patrushev, now head of the powerful security council that advises
the president, believes his country is under threat – from terrorists, from
colour revolutions and, particularly, from America. Ahead of a recent
conference to discuss global instability, Patrushev spoke to Kommersant about
civil liberties, Syria, and western aggression.
Nikolai Patrushev: Global instability is
growing precisely because the west continually seeks to solve its problems at
the expense of others. This has led to sovereignty and territorial integrity being
undermined in a series of Middle Eastern and North African countries. That, in
turn, gave extremists and terrorists the opportunity to gather their forces and
entrench their positions.
The consequences of the spread of chaos across the world are
now entering a new phase. We have witnessed a highly dangerous development
whereby extremist cells operating in different regions of the world unite under
the auspices of the so-called Islamic State (Isis),
which is in fact a terrorist organisation created from one of the branches of
al-Qaida.
This pseudo-government has secured the allegiance of such
odious groups as Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia and part of the
Taliban movement in Pakistan. A whole string of terrorist organisations in
central Asia and the north Caucasus have also sworn loyalty to Isis, including
the Turkistan Islamic Party and Caucasus Emirate.
Isn’t the US calling on all countries to unite to fight
Isis?
Such appeals are certainly being made. But anti-terrorist
coalitions forged by the US are essentially being used to intervene militarily
in the affairs of sovereign states.
You can see this in Syria where the attempt to depose the
lawful president, Bashar al-Assad, resulted in support being leant to
opposition forces. That explains why airstrikes on Isis positions occur only
intermittently. It just so happens that if the terrorists are fighting against
Assad, they can be considered legitimate, whereas if they harm American
interests, as, for instance, in Iraq, they must be annihilated. [The Americans]
define which terrorists you can parlay or have dealings with, and which not,
solely on the basis of their own interests.
I would like to underline the fact that fighting
international terrorism as a single country or narrow coalition is ineffective
by definition. Terrorism cannot be defeated alone or by separate groups because
it doesn’t obey neatly defined geographical boundaries and can strike these
groups without warning. In this regard, Russia is prepared to
cooperate with the security services of any country on any continent, including
the US.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/15/russia-terrorism-ukraine-america-putin