A fabricated speech attributed to Putin and the false claim that Russia was not a colonial and slave-holding country

Putin is once again being attributed a fabricated speech, but it does not appear on official Russian government websites such as Kremlin.ru, which regularly publish his speeches, and even if he did deliver it, its contents are certainly inaccurate. The speech gives the false impression that Russia was never a colonial or slave-owning country and that Napoleon’s war against it was “a war of the West against Russia”

 

Written by: Dr Andreja Bogdanovski, Analyst

 

We analyze a post on the social network Facebook that begins with the words:

Russia is not a colonial country and has never been involved in the slave trade! How many times has Russia fought, fought to maintain balance between peoples and for the good of humanity! Russia has always come to Europe as a liberator, not as a conqueror!

And don’t tell me that Russia is a danger to the world.

Here, once again, we see a fabricated speech attributed to Vladimir Putin, whose last name appears at the bottom of the post, but without any source or link to verify it. We have already written about such fabrications. They are circulated by Putin’s supporters on social networks, yet “his” speeches or statements do not appear on official Russian government websites like Kremlin.ru or on Russian news agencies such as TASS and RIA, which regularly publish everything that Putin says.

To give an appearance of authenticity, the fabricated “Putin speeches” are mixed with claims he actually made. As an example, we quote a fragment of his statement delivered on September 12, 2023, at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok (translated from Russian):

We have never been colonizers anywhere.

It is similar to what we quoted earlier, but it is not identical, and the rest of the statement delivered at the forum has nothing to do with the fictional one we are now analyzing.

 

A possible explanation for Putin’s latest “speech”

The post we are analyzing contains a Macedonian translation of “Putin’s speech,” but it is also found in Russian, so it is logical to think that that is the original version. However, it contains errors that are absolutely unacceptable for a speech by a president, and an example of this is the following (in Russian):

 

мы боремся не только за свою землю, но и за… Цивилизация, наши ценности и наше достоинство.

Here, we see that the thought is interrupted with an ellipsis (three periods). It is correct to use “за цивилизацију” (pronounced: “za civilizaciju”) in the accusative case. Using the nominative form “Цивилизација” (pronounced: “Civilizacija”) in uppercase does not make sense in this context.

Translating that quote from Russian is useless, because the Macedonian language has no cases, so that translation will not be able to capture that error. Throughout the speech, there are some expressions that are atypical for Russians, but more specifically for Putin, if compared to his other speeches.

We also analyzed the Russian version of the “speech” with the Russian artificial intelligence tool Alice, and it confirmed our suspicions. It is possible that the author of that “speech” was a foreign Putin sympathizer who clumsily put together fragments of different posts or made some kind of mistake, after which they automatically translated it all into Russian.

There is also an English version with that ellipsis, but we don’t know if it is the original, and there is also a Serbian version, in which it has been corrected. That interruption is not present in the Macedonian version either, which seems to be a translation from the Serbian.

 

False claim that Russia is not a colonizer, but a liberator

Even if Putin did indeed give that speech, what was said in it is certainly false, especially the claim that Russia is not a colonizer, but a liberator.

The Russian Empire stretched across three continents and it occupied: Alaska, Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan), Transcaucasia (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan), the Baltics (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia), Ukraine, Belarus, Bessarabia, Finland, part of Poland and many other territories.

With the collapse of the empire in 1917, a good part of those territories became independent, but they were reoccupied by the new Soviet Russia of Vladimir Lenin, after which it installed puppet regimes in them and included them as republics in the newly founded USSR, of which it was a founder.

What Lenin failed to seize, Joseph Stalin did. Thus, during World War II, the USSR annexed: the Baltic states, Tuva, parts of Finland, Poland, Romania, Germany, and Japan, and then installed puppet regimes in Eastern Europe, North Korea, and elsewhere.

Many of the territories that the Russians have conquered throughout their history are still under their rule: Chechnya, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Dagestan, Chuvashia, Udmurtia, Buryatia, Yakutia, Chukotka, etc.

Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal were also empires, but they lost most of their possessions or relinquished them. Today, the largest colonial power is Russia, which continues to expand, most notably in Ukraine. In some cases, Russia did play a role in liberation, such as helping Bulgaria gain independence from the Ottomans in 1878. However, these instances are exceptions rather than the rule, and even then, they were not without significant flaws.

 

In Russia, there certainly was slavery

The fabricated narrative claims that Russia did not trade in slaves, but in fact, it certainly did have slaves (the so-called kholopy). After slavery in Russia was officially abolished in 1723, a similar system, known as serfdom, continued to exist until 1861.

 

It is inaccurate to say that Russia is not a threat to the world

The claim in the post that Russia is not a threat to the world is false. Russia has carried out the largest act of aggression in Europe since World War II. Alongside North Korea, it is one of the only countries that threatens the use of nuclear weapons, posing a danger to the entire world. Vladimir Putin is parading the Oreshnik and Burevesnik missiles, while deadly threats to Western countries have also been made by his close allies, including Vyacheslav Volodin, Andrey Gurulev, Dmitry Kiselyov, and Vladimir Solovyov.

 

The myth of the centuries-old struggle of the West against Russia

The post, or rather the fictional “Putin speech,” also says the following:

For more than two hundred years, the West has been trying to destroy Russia: Napoleon came to Moscow…

It was not a war of the West against Russia. Russia’s allies against Napoleon were Britain and other Western European countries. Ironically, however, Russia and Napoleon had previously been allies against Britain. Napoleon was not only waging war in Russia, but also conquering territories across Europe, including Spain and Portugal, the westernmost countries in Europe.

It is false to claim that Western countries have been working against Russia for more than two centuries. The Anglo-Americans and the French were its allies in two world wars. The Crimean War (1853-1856) was a relatively rare case of several Western European countries uniting against Russia, but not all of them. A similar situation occured at the Congress of Berlin (1878), although that was a diplomatic confrontation. These were rare exceptions rather than the rule. 

Towards the end of the post, or rather the fictional “Putin speech,” it says:

Russia is no one’s enemy…

This information is also incorrect. It is an undeniable fact that Russia is an enemy of Ukraine.

Taking into account everything stated so far, we assess the post as untrue.

 

 

All comments and remarks regarding this and other Vistinomer articles, correction and clarification requests as well as suggestions for fact-checking politicians’ statements and political parties’ promises can be submitted by using this form