In a question to Russian President Vladimir Putin at his annual year-end press conference, a BBC reporter asked the usual BBC inane question about whether President Putin would continue a policy of seeking for internal “enemies” going forward. Putin simply referred to the fact that, like every other country, Russia has laws against foreign agents. If they cease being so, they will no longer be viewed with suspicion. He then added: “You also asked whether there will be new special military operations. There will be none if we are treated with respect and if our interests are taken into account, just as we have consistently tried to take yours into account. But you deceived us, for example, with NATO’s eastward expansion. We were told there NATO would not expand ‘one inch eastward’—that is a direct quote. And what happened? As they say it here, they simply deceived us and disregarded our security interests.
“You—well, of course not you personally, but Western politicians—created the current situation with their own hands and continue to escalate it. They constantly talk about preparing for war with Russia. You have lived here for years, as far as I know. I think even those who speak about war with Russia understand [the absurdity of] this. Are we planning to attack Europe or something? What kind of nonsense is that?
“This is being done for internal political reasons in order to create an image of an enemy. And an image of an enemy, Russia in this case, is being deliberately constructed in order to conceal the mistakes that many Western governments have consistently made over the years, both in economy and social policy,” he declared.
