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President Vladimir Putin visited schoolchildren in Kaliningrad on Thursday and gave a speech encouraging them to give up on their dreams.
The Russian leader’s not-so-cheerful message is hidden in a long monologue he gave on a commemorative occasion of Knowledge Day, a holiday to kick off the school year.
In more than an hour of answering the schoolchildren’s possible written questions, Putin, when asked who his mentors were, seemed briefly sentimental as he recalled one of the most important classes he had learned.
Speaking affectionately of a former KGB mentor, he told the young men that the guy “had made illegal paintings abroad” for decades, risking his life, and “expected gratitude from the homeland. “
Instead, he said, his mentor “had been grateful to him himself for giving him the opportunity to paint and be sought after. “
Prominent Russian General Filmed Mendacity on Putin’s Face Shameful Report
Putin went on to say that he had learned the “price of being” from this mentor, thanks to the realization that that price “is not in the realization of his ambitions, but in service. “
“I want to wish all those mentors,” he said.
The Russian leader also repeated his distorted claims about Ukraine, telling schoolchildren that the country was created thanks to the Soviet Union and that the other inhabitants of Donbass are part of the “Russian world. “
He went on to claim that all of Russia is at risk because of an “anti-Russian enclave” right next door, strangely saying that those who “think there is some kind of aggression coming from Russia today” are wrong.
“The guys who fight there [for Russia] threaten their physical condition and die. They want to understand why they give their lives. For Russia and for the other people of Donbass,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s youth also celebrated the start of the school year on Thursday, as many of their schools are no longer open and thousands of their classmates were orphaned, displaced or killed.
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