Moscow, 8 March: Russia's strategic goal is to see Russian compatriots abroad as citizens enjoying full rights in the countries of their residence, Russian Foreign Ministry has said.

"Russia's strategic goal is to see Russian compatriots as citizens enjoying full rights in the countries of their residence, to see them preserving their ethnic and cultural originality and acting as Russia's important intellectual, economic and spiritual resource in international politics," Aleksandr Chepurin, director of the Foreign Ministry department for work with compatriots abroad, told RIA.

He said that the Russian diaspora abroad is among the largest in the world. In several countries Russians comprise over 20 per cent of the population. These countries are Kazakhstan (28 per cent), Latvia (29 per cent), Estonia (29 per cent) and Ukraine (22 per cent). [Passage omitted]

"Suppression or forceful assimilation of the language and culture of a national minority, violation of its rights and freedoms is a direct way to destabilization," he said. "Unfortunately we see such phenomena in relation to our compatriots, our language, our culture, the [Russian] language and education in the republics of the former Soviet Union," Chepurin said.
[Passage omitted to end]