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The word used for “Russian” in the original was “россиян”, not “русский”, which means that it’s asking Russian citizens as a whole, not ethnic Russians as a particular tribe. This should help to make you understand that Russia’s a self-consciously multiethnic, multicultural, and multiconfessional state, unlike the distorted caricatures bruited about by CNN and Fox News (along with the rest of their amen corner in the Western media). By the way, ethnic Russians make up 80 percent of the RF‘s population, Tatars are 4 percent, Ukrainians are 2 percent, Bashkirs, Chuvash, and Chechens each comprise about 1 percent, and all other groups are less than that. One can see that Western estimates of the Muslim population is way out of whack, more motivated by wishful thinking than observation of reality. By the way, the Russian population hit its nadir in 2009, it’s been on the rise since then, as the birth rate’s gone up and the death rate has gone down, as a result of policies put in place by VVP. Again, the Western punditry has to eat crow supreme à la mode.
Why do you listen to them?
BMD
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30 July is International Friendship Day. Our infographic will show you which countries that Russians favour the most, and those, on the contrary, which one could hardly call friends and political partners of Russia. The UN General Assembly decided to establish International Friendship Day on 27 April 2011 at its 65th session. The basis for the new holiday was the Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace which was part of the International Decade for the Promotion of a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World, which covered the decade 2001-10. The UN resolution highlighted the importance of the new observance in strengthening friendly relations between peoples. In addition, one of the main goals of the international festival was to attract young people to social activities designed to respect the perception of different cultures.
30 July 2013
RIA-Novosti
Voices from Russia 
Venezuela Expels Three American Diplomats in “Sabotage Conspiracy”
Tags: Caracas, Chargé d'affaires, CIA, diplomacy, diplomatic relations, Henrique Capriles Radonski, Hugo Chávez, Hugo Chávez Frías, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, International relations, Langley, Maduro, Nicolás Maduro, Nicolás Maduro Moros, political commentary, politics, United States, USA, Venezuela
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Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros announced on national television that he’s ordered the expulsion of three American diplomats for allegedly plotting acts of sabotage in conspiracy with “far-right” opposition groups. Speaking in a public address Monday, Maduro gave Chargé d’Affaires Kelly Keiderling, the top American diplomat in Caracas, and two other embassy officials, 48 hours to leave Venezuela, whose economy has been troubled by power outages and food shortages. Maduro said that he had evidence that the American diplomats frequently met with the “Venezuelan far-right” to finance it and “encourage actions to sabotage the country’s electrical grid and economy. I can’t allow them to interfere in Venezuela’s internal affairs and I ask for your full support in this struggle against the interference. Yankees go home, get out of Venezuela!”
Venezuela and the USA have been without mutual ambassadors since 2010, and Caracas toughened its anti-American rhetoric following the death of Venezuela’s outspoken leader Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías in March. Maduro, chosen by Chávez as his successor, expelled two American military attachés for alleged attempts to destabilise the country just a few hours prior to the official announcement of Chávez’s death from cancer on 5 March. Meanwhile, the Venezuelan opposition claims that the leftist government uses “foreign interference” as a smokescreen to hide their own inability to handle the country’s ailing economy, wide-spread corruption, and rampant crime.
1 October 2013
RIA-Novosti
http://www.en.rian.ru/world/20131001/183872654/Venezuela-Expels-3-US-Diplomats-in-Sabotage-Conspiracy.html
Editor’s Note:
Given the dirty nature of Langley’s involvement in the region, one can’t blame Maduro for doing what he did. Oh, yes… Capriles, America’s fair-haired boy in Venezuela… his father was a lickspittle Quisling, an executive for an American multinational, Kraft (Capriles’ family owns apartments on the posh Affluent Effluent Upper East Side in New York and he took courses at Columbia). That is, his wealth came from kissing the Americans’ arse (pecunia non olet in its most disgusting form). Fancy that…
BMD