MOSCOW. June 24 (Interfax) - The United States and some other Western countries have set the course towards the development of a totalitarian liberal model, which brings to mind the history of the late Soviet Union, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergei Naryshkin said.
"We are watching in awe as the West is trying to divide our diverse world into two absolutely artificial camps, those allegedly democratic and allegedly authoritarian," Naryshkin said at the Moscow Conference on International Security on Thursday.
The West "is labeling Russia, China, Iran and even its NATO allies, such as Turkey and, to some degree, in certain issues, Poland," he said.
"The United States and the other so-called liberal democracy models do not seem to notice their swift transformation into totalitarian liberal regimes," Naryshkin said.
"The United States and some other Western countries are exhibiting practically every sign of totalitarian dictatorship as defined by Zbigniew Bzezhinski. Just look, there is the mass media monopoly, the police state, the unchanging oligarchic elites and even the planned economy, if we take into account the illegal nature of the sanctions imposed by Western countries," he said.
"This is a rather interesting situation that somehow resembles the history of the late Soviet Union," Naryshkin said.
"The West is trying to push ideological values, which it does not believe and which it refutes with its own internal policy, on the entire world," he said.
As to the results of the Russian-U.S. summit held last week, Naryshkin wondered whether "the West will be able to appreciate and use the results and the spirit of Geneva to try to build a safer and fairer world."
"In order to do so, it would be necessary to stop drawing division lines and to start dealing with truly important global problems together," Naryshkin said.
The coronavirus pandemic has become "a real ordeal for people, national governance systems, and development models," he said.
"We should give credit to the Covid-19 crisis. It has highlighted the main sore points not just in the system of modern humans but also in the modern world order. The shaky nature of international institutions, norms and regulations that once looked solid has become so obvious that it is no longer possible to delay their recovery and strengthening," Naryshkin said.
"As they say, the old things are gone, and now everything is new. To be more specific, the pandemic has primarily revealed the profound crisis of the West-centric liberal globalization. Everyone can see that global supranational institutions and international non-governmental organizations are losing to the strong and sovereign state authority from the angle of rapid anti-crisis decisions. The so-called international community has appeared to be illusory, same as the moral leadership of the West led by the United States, which distanced themselves from the common fight against the treacherous illness at a certain point," Naryshkin said.