MOSCOW, June 9. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he views negatively the bill submitted by his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky which outlines that Russians cannot be considered a native ethnicity of the country, he said on Wednesday in an interview for the Rossiya-24 TV channel.
When asked his personal view of the initiative, the Russian leader said, "Negative, of course. How else can you view this?" he asked.
He suggested recalling how Ukraine was formed as a state. "It is a brood of the Soviet period. The Bolsheviks created union republics, including Ukraine, when forming the Soviet Union," he noted.
Kiev’s idea to declare Russians non-indigenous in Ukraine deals a powerful and serious blow to the Russian nation, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday in an interview for the Rossiya-24 TV channel.
"It is a very powerful, a very serious blow to the Russian nation in general and we, of course, cannot be indifferent to this," the president stressed.
Putin also said that implementation of this legislative initiative "will force hundreds of thousands and possibly even millions [of people] to either leave [Ukraine] as they won’t want to be second-rate people or rewrite [information about their nationality in official records] in some other way.".
The Russian president noted that "Ukraine is being viewed as some kind of antipode of Russia," so Western structures prefer not to notice it.
"Ukraine is being created as Russia’s antipode, so [the West] prefers not to notice anything, including the swastikas that neo-Nazi walk with in the Ukrainian cities," Putin concluded.
Ideas of Nazi Germany
Putin believes that attempts to divide different ethnicities leaving in Ukraine into indigenous and non-indigenous seemingly echo ideas of Nazi Germany, he said.
"Separation between indigenous, first-rate and second-rate categories of people and so on in itself very much resemble and echo the theory and practices of Nazi Germany," the Russian leader commented on the bill on "indigenous peoples" proposed by the Kiev authorities. This initiative particularly states that Russians cannot be considered native peoples in Ukraine.
"And what should people with mixed blood do?" he asked. "[Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky himself is Jewish by nationality. I don’t know maybe he has more different blood in him," Putin added.
The president noted that he read through the bill. According to one of its provisions, Ukraine’s indigenous peoples "cannot be discriminated against," he said. "There is a general legal rule that everything that is not banned is allowed. So, indigenous peoples cannot face discrimination. And non-indigenous can be discriminated against?" he asked.
Putin also noted that this initiative won’t only affect Russians. "We are not just talking about Russians. Romanians, Poles, Hungarians. It is a huge issue," he pointed out. Putin believes that "this is completely unacceptable and runs counter to any provisions of the international humanitarian law.".