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Senator warns Western-designed destructive influence on Russia’s youth intensifying

The legislator noted that information and computer technologies were used more and more extensively to exert a harmful and subversive impact on the country’s young people
Chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s Interim Commission for the Protection of State Sovereignty and Prevention of Interference in Russia’s Internal Affairs Andrei Klimov Valery Sharifulin/TASS
Chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s Interim Commission for the Protection of State Sovereignty and Prevention of Interference in Russia’s Internal Affairs Andrei Klimov
© Valery Sharifulin/TASS

MOSCOW, April 15. /TASS/. Efforts by a number of Western countries to wield a destructive influence on Russia’s youth have intensified substantially over the past 3-5 years and have become more widespread and aggressive, Chairman of the Russian Federation Council’s Interim Commission for the Protection of State Sovereignty and Prevention of Interference in Russia’s Internal Affairs Andrei Klimov said on Thursday.

"Our foreign opponents view young people, including minors, as the most vulnerable link in the domestic political system and unscrupulously exploit the lack of profound knowledge and proper life experience among some young people. Efforts to exert a destructive outside influence on Russia’s youth have intensified substantially over the past 3-5 years, becoming systematic and widespread, and, I would even add, aggressive," the senator said at the commission’s expanded meeting.

According to Klimov, the commission notes that the United States and other NATO countries, as well as EU agencies, continue to view influencing Russian youth as a priority tool to meddle in Russia’s sovereign affairs.

The legislator noted that information and computer technologies were used more and more extensively to exert a harmful and subversive impact on the country’s young people. "False notions of our Motherland, its history, achievements, traditions, values are imposed on our young audiences, deliberately distorted concepts of existing problems and ways of solving them are put forward. The West does not even think about hiding that," he emphasized.

The external influence on young people has been consolidated by encouraging the activities of academic teaching staff loyal to the West, introducing Western personnel to the teaching system, targeted grants policy and so on, Klimov went on to say. The lawmaker recalled that the commission had previously referred to the work of opponents in this regard and noted that the topic required a separate, in-depth study and a well-thought-out response, "which in no way implies any self-isolation or curtailment of mutually beneficial cooperation in the field of science, education and enlightenment."