Questions to Putin at upcoming Valdai forum leaked

The tentative list was published by one of Russia’s Telegram channels, ZN.ua reports.

“There will be no surprises," the report reads.

The practice of orchestrating events involving President Putin, to avoid inconvenient questions, has long been traditional for the Kremlin, with a few exceptions.

The 19th forum is titled "The world after hegemony: justice and security for all."

"In short: the same old song we've been hearing for at least 15 years. The only hope is that the top man, if he does participate in the event, will talk between the lines, as was the case last year, for example. Then the president threatened Europe with an energy crisis, albeit using an extremely unfortunate metaphor, comparing Russia to a sister fox (a kids tale antagonist - ed.) The crisis thundered, fixating (Russia’s - ed.) role of the red thief and fraudster," the report adds.

Some questions are related in one way or the other to the Russian war in Ukraine. Some touch upon Russia’s relations with other nations in the context of the ongoing conflict, and some reflect on ideological issues.

“The main content of Russian history is a Victory over Dark, the military, spiritual, and political victory. Do you think that Russia’s ideology is that of a Russian Victory?” reads the first question, set to be asked by Alexander Prokhanov with the Zavtra newspaper.

“You assess the Ukrainian crisis as a major confrontation between the collective West and Russia. Your government earlier spoke of the ‘red lines’ that the U.S. and NATO mustn’t cross. As the Russian nuclear doctrine lays down ‘existential risks to the state or its sovereignty’ as grounds for deploying nuclear weapons, how can it be applied to the new territories that acceded to Russia? Which ‘red lines’ can’t be crossed in this case as it remains unclear which borders are presented?” Igor Gilov with Folha De S.Paolo is supposed to ask.

It should be recalled that at the end of September, against the background of a partial military call-up in Russia, public sentiment in the country deteriorated sharply. Tension, irritation, fear and longing have increased.

As reported earlier, Russia's senior officials and propaganda pundits since Sunday have been spinning allegations of Ukraine preparing to deploy a radioactive "dirty bomb" on its own soil to blame Russia.

Decrying the accusations, which the major Western nations have already called unfounded, President Volodymyr Zelensky said: “Ukraine is always about recovery. Always about life. And there’s only one source who can use nuclear weapons in our part of Europe and that source ordered that Comrade (Defense Minister Sergei - ed.) Shoigu call someone. If Russia calls and says that Ukraine is allegedly preparing something, it means one thing: Russia has already prepared all this. I believe that now the world should react in the toughest possible way.”