Although Washington keeps on disseminating an anti-Russian sentiment among the people of the U.S., the American nation is not the enemy of Russia, according to Maria Zakharova, Russia’s official representative of Foreign Ministry.
In early August this year, Maria Zakharova became the first woman in history to assume the post of director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Information and Press department.
Zakharova believes that the American nation is not hostile to Russia. “The U.S. is not Obama. The U.S. is the people who populate the country. The problem lies in the fact that the current US authorities are trying to impose anti-Russian sentiments on their people,” Zakharova said in an interview with Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda.
“But the U.S. as a nation and Americans as a people are not our enemies,” she added.
Zakharova was then asked to give her opinion on U.S. President Barack Obama’s January statement that the Russian economy was “in tatters.”
“I am very surprised by the fact that the head of a state, who considers himself a civilized person, is proud of doing harm to other people,” Zakharova said, referring to Obama’s allegedly harmful actions toward Russian people.
“I have always thought that we should be proud of doing good to people. This is the first time I’ve ever seen something like this in the history of modern diplomacy,” the first female director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s department said.
After Obama had made the statement in his State of the Union Address in January this year, Russian top officials revealed what they thought about it.
Russia’s deputy prime minister in charge of the defense industry called the U.S. President a “dreamer” in his Twitter post. Dmitry Rogozin expressed the widely-spread belief in Russia that Western sanctions were not as effective as their initiators had thought.
“Obama has claimed that the Russian economy [is] in tatters because of the United States. Like he has torn us like a dog would tear a rag. What a dreamer,” Rogozin wrote in his Twitter.
Frants Klintsevich, a member of the parliamentary majority United Russia party, responded to the U.S. President, saying that Obama’s statement confirmed the “true attitude” of the Washington administration towards Russia as well as U.S. plans for global dominance.
Reality: Americans hate Russians – Russians hate Americans
However, Maria Zakharova’s claims do not seem to reflect the reality. The latest Pew Research Center survey found that 67 percent of American people express a negative sentiment toward Russia, while only 22 percent like their former Cold War enemy.
In 2013, as many as 37 percent of Americans expressed a positive attitude toward Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russians, in their turn, like the American nation even less than vice versa. In 2015, only 15 percent of Russians view the U.S. positively, while in 2010 and 2013 the number stood at 57 and 51 percent respectively.
However, it’s interesting to note that another survey conducted by Russian Levada Center in July showed an increasing warmth in the attitude of Russians towards Americans.
Russian survey found that Russians express a more favorable opinion of the U.S. compared to January of this year. The number of Russian people disliking Americans dropped by 11 percent since January this year.
As of July 2015, as many as 19 percent of Russians though of the U.S. positively, while 70 percent of Russian people had a tendency to express an anti-American sentiment.
The Pew Research Center survey also found that Moscow is despised not only by countries that imposed sanctions against Putin’s Russia. According to the survey, 26 out of 40 nations express more unfavorable opinions of the nuclear power and its president than favorable.
Americans wish Russia didn’t exist as a country
The words of a former Russian spy chief also do not align with Zakharova’s claims that “the U.S. as a nation and Americans as a people are not our enemies.”
As it was reported by ValueWalk, Russian former spy chief Nikolai Patrushev told Russian Kommersant that the Americans “would much rather that Russia did not exist at all. As a country,” because Russia possess vast natural resources.
According to the spy, Washington believes that the Kremlin controls these resources “illegally and undeservedly” as Moscow does not use them as they are supposed to be used.
Earlier this month, a journalist of The Observer, Jack Hanick, decided to prevent further misunderstanding between societies of both the U.S. and Russia by describing the relations between the two countries from the perspective of someone who has lived in Russia for over two years.
In his editorial article, Hanick wrote that when he had arrived to Russia, the relations between Moscow and Washington were developing in the right direction.
Putin helped Obama avoid a fatal worldwide mistake
Right when Obama wanted to launch an offensive on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Putin managed to persuade Syria to destroy its chemical weapons. It was the moment when Putin helped Obama avoid a fatal mistake of a worldwide scale, according to the journalist.
Somewhere in that period of time, the Kremlin adopted a decree to ban homosexual propaganda among minors. This kind of ban exists in both the U.S. and the U.K., the author of the editorial noted.
However, the West perceived the decree as a ban of homosexualism as a whole. Then, “the reaction was overwhelming against Russia,” Hanick noted.
After that, Western countries boycotted Sochi 2014 Olympic Games. It was the time when the West started “creating the narrative that Russia was the old repressive Soviet Union and Russia must be stopped,” according to the journalist.
Then, at the time of the Olympic Games, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown by Maidan revolution. The Russian society believes that the coup was planned and sponsored by the West, Hanick pointed out.
The journalist notes that Russians believe that the annexation (it’s ‘Crimea coming back home to Russia’ for Russian people) of Crimea was of no concern to the West.
“Russia wanted Crimea back. Crimea also wanted Russia back. Crimeans speak Russian and are closely tied to their 300-year Russian heritage,” Hanick wrote, adding that the sanctions imposed by the West were seen aggressive in Moscow and drove Russia into the arms of China.
The cooperation between the countries led to the creation of “the AIIB bank to directly compete against the IMF for world banking power and the U.S. is having trouble preventing its allies from joining,” according to the journalist.
ValueWalk has recently published a piece on what the U.S. should do about the alliance between China and Russia. Should it be countered militarily or silently?
