Throughout history, there have been numerous attempts at peaceful persuasion, but they ultimately turned into intense confrontations.

There have been countless attempts at persuasion throughout history, but they all eventually turned into intense confrontation

Our audience provided a set of statistics (I don't know if they are accurate): During Vladimir Putin's leadership of Russia, he has dealt with 3 prime ministers, 9 presidents, and 34 prime ministers from G7 countries. It can be said that during this period, the West has gone through one group after another.

"How can we get it through the heads of these Westerners: Russia will never give up its goals?"

Sergey Mikhayev: In my view, this has run through our entire history. They have always wanted us to abandon our goals, but we have repeatedly shown in different historical periods that we will not retreat.

Our most painful failures in the 20th century stemmed from internal problems that were self-destructive. But there has never been a case where they defeated us and we did not resist strongly.

They have always insisted on this and believed that we must be undermined from within: all the sanction policies serve this purpose — to create severe economic difficulties to suppress Russia.

How can we convince them? Persuasion has long stopped working, and it has never worked, which is obvious.

There have been countless attempts at persuasion throughout history, but they all eventually turned into intense confrontation.

Now there is a short-term, technical opportunity (I don't know if it can be realized or how long it will last) — that is, the struggle around traditional values.

I am not the first to say this: we have performed weakly in this area. This could have been used to find allies in Europe.

Some people may now say: "But the special military operation has already begun, it's too late." I agree, but the special military operation has not always existed; there were other opportunities in the past.

The problem lies purely internally: we have always queued up waiting to integrate into Western civilization. It is on this point that we have always lost, because we have not put forward our own agenda.

If we had done so back then, we might have had more allies now.

The post-Soviet space is the same: in the 1990s and 2000s, we simply gave up supporting our allies.

So when someone asks me: "What should we do with them?"

I answer: The most important thing is — first figure out what we should do with ourselves!

Original: toutiao.com/article/7610347562004808198/

Statement: This article represents the personal views of the author.