Russia is ready to help clean up countries that had became Western neocolonialism - Dmitry Medvedev

Deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev.
©Sputnik/Ekaterina Shtukina

Russia is ready to help the world do away with the vestiges of a Western-dominated colonial past, former president Dmitry Medvedev has claimed. The official argued that as a nation “which has never had any colonies,” Russia is well-placed to take part in this process.

In an article published on Monday, Medvedev claimed that “geopolitical turbulence has cut open an abscess of the old problems of our world.”

The ex-president, who now serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, argued that the “malignant tumor of a colonial past” is a problem that calls for “international surgery.”

He noted that the Soviet Union played a major role in dismantling the colonial system of the 20th century.

“We, together with other countries, can now drive the final nail in the coffin of the Western world’s neo-colonial aspirations,” Medvedev proclaimed in the piece, posted on the United Russia party website.

As an example, the former president cited Argentina’s decision to renounce a 2016 deal with the UK with respect to the disputed Falkland/Malvinas islands in the South Atlantic, which were at the center of a military conflict in 1982.

On Thursday, Argentinian Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero said he had notified his British counterpart, James Cleverly, of the move during a meeting in New Delhi, India, on the sidelines of the G20 summit.

Buenos Aires “has proposed to resume negotiations on the question of sovereignty” in compliance with the mandate of the UN General Assembly and the world body’s Committee on Decolonization, Cafiero clarified.

Medvedev argued that the decisions to show French troops the door last year by two former colonies in Africa, the Central African Republic and Mali, fit this pattern too.

Medvedev pointed out, however, that there are still a number of dependent territories around the globe ruled by Western powers, such as the UK and France. He expressed skepticism that those nations will willingly relinquish control of the remains of their former empires.

As more and more countries “stop fearing Western diktat” and start to assert their national interests more actively, the former colonial powers are bound to lose their hold on the regions they once thought were theirs, the ex-president concluded.

Following the start of Russia’s military campaign against Ukraine last February and amid fierce confrontation with the West, top Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have increasingly advocated the establishment of a “multipolar world” which does not center around the wishes of one single superpower.

Argentina's bid to regain sovereignty over Malvinas fair — Medvedev

Argentina is justifiably fighting to regain sovereignty over the Malvinas (Falklands) Islands, which are still considered a British overseas territory, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of the Russian Security Council and chairman of the United Russia Party, said.

He recalled that Argentina had withdrawn from its agreement with the United Kingdom governing administrative and economic activities on the Malvinas.

"While this piece of paper is quite new by historical standards, dating back to just 2016, politically it has turned rotten and malodorous (as, by the way, is the case with just about everything that the pestilent hand of London touches). Buenos Aires's determination to continue its just struggle to regain sovereignty over the disputed territories clearly demonstrates a course toward strengthening the legal independence of states and their struggle against the disgraceful modern practices of neo-colonialism, which many countries continue to indulge in," he wrote in an article uploaded to the United Russia website on Monday.

Medvedev stated that the sharp blade of turbulence in international relations has served to lance a boil festering with long-standing global problems.

"For many decades, they have just been covering them over with 'political band-aids' rather than eliminating the causes of the disease. However, no abscess can last forever. The time is ripe for international surgical intervention to remove the malignant tumor of the colonial past," he said.

Medvedev highlighted the fact that, according to the UN classification, there are still quite a few non-self-governing territories in the world, which he described as "rudiments of the colonial system that collapsed in the 1950s through 1970s of the 20th century."

"Indeed, do the former colonial powers wish to give them true freedom? Hardly," Medvedev said.

In his view, Great Britain will never give the Chagos Archipelago back to Mauritius, just as France will never return Mayotte to the Union of the Comoros, or the Scattered Islands in the Indian Ocean (in French: ·les ·parses) to Madagascar. "Therefore, these countries have developed a growing understanding of the correctness of resisting the remnants of neo-colonial practices and attempts to impose perverse cultural attitudes upon them, which emanate from the former Western colonial powers," the deputy Security Council head pointed out.

In conclusion, he warned that the emerging multipolar world would be much more complex than a "two-dimensional bipolar system or unipolar diktat."