Russian president echoes Al Capone as he says 'weapons and politeness' are better than 'politeness alone'
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President Vladimir Putin takes part in the plenary meeting of the United People's Front's Second Action Forum in Moscow Photo: EPA
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Vladimir Putin issued a defiant message to
the West on Tuesday, accusing the United States of trying to
"subjugate" Russia while promising it would never succeed.
The
Russian president also appeared to channel Al Capone, the Chicago
mobster, when he joked that "weapons and politeness" were more effective
than "politeness alone".
Meeting
supporters at a forum in Moscow, Mr Putin corrected another speaker who
said that the United States wanted to humiliate Russia.
"They
don't want to humiliate us, they want to subjugate us, to solve their
problems at our expense," he said. "They want to bring us under
control." Mr Putin added: "Throughout history no one has ever succeeded
in doing that to Russia and they never will."
The president was speaking to members of the All-Russia People's Front, a coalition of groups that back him.
His characteristically sharp-tongued delivery
suggested Mr Putin was keen to dispel any idea that he had been cowed at
the G20 summit in Brisbane over the weekend, which he left early after a
series of Western leaders upbraided him over Russia's military
intervention in the Ukraine crisis.
Before his speech on Tuesday,
the Russian leader was shown a new military vehicle described as a cross
between a car and an armoured personnel carrier.
Manufacturers
had jokingly labelled the vehicles "polite armoured cars" – in reference
to "the polite people", a phrase that became popular in the spring to
describe the Russian soldiers who led the Kremlin's takeover of
Ukraine's Crimea peninsula.
On seeing the machine, Mr Putin
quipped: "You can get a lot more done with weapons and politeness than
you can with politeness alone."
The phrase appeared to echo a
saying attributed to Al Capone: "You can get much further with a kind
word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."
Gun-lobbyists
in the US also use the slogan: "An armed society is a polite society."
Mr Putin said that events in Crimea and Ukraine – where pro-Moscow
rebels have carved out a de facto independent territory in the
Russo-phone east of the country – had united the Russian people.
"Our
nation has shown the way with real civil participation, empathy and
patriotism, and it has demonstrated its unity," he said.
Mr Putin
defended the government's decision to introduce a ban on food imports
from western states that imposed sanctions on Russia over its alleged
meddling in Ukraine. He said those countries had "put themselves in a
spot" by introducing sanctions and provoking the Russian measures in
response.
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