PYATIGORSK, May 19. /TASS/. Russia’s opponents have thrown the kitchen sink at the country, and attacks on Russian values persist, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday at a meeting of the Council on Interethnic Relations.

"We see the extent of aggressive external pressure that’s being exerted on Russia and our entire society now. Pretty much the entire arsenal - economic, military, political, informational - is directed against us, and a most powerful anti-Russian propaganda has been deployed. Attacks on our history, culture, and moral values have not stopped," the president said.

According to Putin, attempts to "drive a wedge" between the peoples of Russia and break their unity continue.

"Our opponents have decided that Russia's multi-ethnicity is its weak spot and are doing everything to divide us," he said.

"Opponents <...> are provoking conflicts within national communities, ostensibly on behalf of Russian peoples, create various social and political organizations that represent only themselves and rabble rousers like them, and brazenly declare the need for the so-called decolonization of Russia," the president said. "By the way, they speak in their own language because they themselves are countries that owned colonies and today pursue a neo-colonial policy. They talk about us, thinking that we are the same as them."

He also said Russia’s adversaries talk about the need to divide the country into dozens of small state entities.

"And it is clear why," the president said. "To then subjugate them to their will, exploit them, and use them for their own selfish interests. They have no other goals."

"The authors of such concepts are accustomed to following Western ideological templates with their racist, neo-colonial approaches, claiming the exceptionalism of some nations and the inferiority of others, and dividing people into first, second, and third-class categories. But it seems to me that they also have a higher [class], which considers itself above its allies," Putin said.