Patriotism is Russia’s national idea, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday, cautioning, however, against flag-waving moods, TASS reported.
“Yes, it’s patriotism, I think there can be nothing else here,” Putin said when asked about the Russian national idea. But patriotism should not be spurious, he stressed in an interview with the program ‘Moscow. Kremlin. Putin” a fragment of which was uploaded to the Instagram page of its presenter Pavel Zarubin.
According to the president, “patriotism means devoting oneself to the development of the country, its progress.”
“But this does not mean that we must keep clinging to our heroic past, we must look ahead, into our no less heroic and successful future, and this is the ticket to success,” the Russian leader stressed.
In December 2019, President Putin addressed the topic of patriotism at his annual news conference, saying that he saw it as the only possible ideology of the modern democratic society.
“In my opinion, patriotism is the only possible ideology in the modern democratic society. Patriotism in the broadest and best sense,” the Russian leader said back then. “It must be depoliticized and aimed to strengthen the inner framework of the Russian state,” he stressed.
