MOSCOW, December 2. /TASS/. Western countries have been trying to split Russian society over ethnic or religious issues, while spreading distorted information about losses of service members from the country’s national republics taking part in the special military operation, but such attempts at destabilizing the situation have found a weak response nationwide, a senior official at Russia’s Federal Agency for Ethnic Affairs told TASS.

"Anti-Russian and Russophobic propaganda campaigns are being conducted and distorted information about military casualties among service members from the national republics is being disseminated. And there have been insinuations implying that the special military operation is an ‘alien war’ for Russian ethnicities, especially for Muslims," said Abdulgamid Bulatov, who is in charge of monitoring interethnic and interconfessional relations as well as extremism prevention and cooperation with religious associations at the agency.

"Western adversaries have been pursuing a deliberate policy of breaking up the country by pitting Russian peoples against one another, exploiting the old ‘evil empire’ myth and promoting what they call ‘decolonization’. They have even drawn up a map of how to divide Russia or what they blatantly call `the post-Russian space’ into lots of small quasi-states based on the principles of ethnicity," he said.

According to Bulatov, external pressure has intensified since the onset of the special military operation, with primarily online destabilization attempts. The West has been proactive in its attempts to discredit the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church and foment strife, while criticizing clerics who have voiced their support for the special military operation. However, such attempts have hardly affected Russians, he maintained.

"Despite efforts by the collective West, attempts at destabilizing the situation in the sphere of interethnic and interconfessional relations across Russia have found a weak response. The reverse is true, based on the data of the monitoring system and public polls, it’s fairly safe to say that the overwhelming majority of Russians feel united and support the special military operation," Bulatov concluded.