Is Russia the Future of Christian Europe？
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Summary
Fabrice Sorlin is a French Catholic living in Russia with 10 children. He is originally from France and has lived in Russia for the past 10 years. In this episode, he talks about his life in Russia and why he decided to move there.
Transcript
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Russia must convert. Of course, they will. Because the big problem now that we have is the problem with the Vatican.
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Hey, my friends, we are here in Nizhny Novgorod in Russia.
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And I have the great opportunity to speak to a bunch of people, as you already met Joseph Schutzmann.
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He is a Frenchman living here in Russia with 10 children.
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And I want to talk to him about that, Fabrice. Thank you for joining us.
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Thank you very much, John, for your invitation.
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Let me figure this out. You are originally from France. You are a traditional Catholic.
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You have 10 children and you've been living in Russia for a decade.
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So, many people back home would say, that's not possible because Russia is hostile to Catholics.
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Phil, why would you do this? And is this working for you? And what is this like?
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Yeah, so I decided to move on in 2015 with my whole family. At that time, my wife was pregnant with our seventh children.
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And then we had three more in Russia. At the end, six children born in France and four in Russia.
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You know, when I was in France, I'm a French patriot, Catholic traditionalist.
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And I used to make a lot of politics to defend the traditional values in France,
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fight for my country against liberalism, against LGBT ideology and so on.
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I had many problems in France, a lot of problems. I was persecuted very heavily.
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I lost my job. I lost my home. I lost everything because of the attacks of liberals and all the mainstream media.
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It was a terrible time. But in the same way, because I do politics for a long time, I understood very soon
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that France and Russia must be strong together, must have a good relationship.
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And I had already many contacts in Russia. And after I was persecuted in France,
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I decided to visit Russia one time with my wife and some of my children.
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And we went there. We had discussions with a lot of people. I went to Douma, to the state Douma in Moscow.
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And I understood at that time, the very first time when I came in Moscow, it was in 2013,
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I understood that Russia will be the future of the Christian Europe.
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Because all what my country, France, which used to be a Catholic country,
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all what we lose, all what our different governments were fighting against,
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I mean the traditional values. When I spoke with high ranking people here in Russia,
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I understood that Russia is still on the way to defend the great value, the traditional way of life.
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And when I went back to France, we decided with my wife that soon or late we will have to move in Russia.
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And this is what we finally did. And I can tell you something.
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I never regret this choice because for the education of my children,
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which is the most important thing for me as a father,
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I want, you know, not only give the opportunity to my children to have a good diploma
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and to make a good job, I want to save their soul.
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And here in Russia, this is the country where, you know, you can educate your children
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as my grandfather, grand-grandfather used to do in France.
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But it's so complicated now in Western countries to do that.
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And so I decided to move. It was a huge decision, of course,
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I have my parents, I have my brother and sister.
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And we decided to quit France and our relatives and friends to go in Russia.
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Of course, we're going back France at least one a year to visit our relatives
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But I feel better here, you know, you understand.
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I feel very, very good in this country because I know that it could shock a lot of people.
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But I will tell you, I can tell that it is the country of freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of religious.
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I'm Catholic traditionalist. I do have mass every Sunday with the society.
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They have a small, very small chapel. Unfortunately, too small.
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I decided, you know, to put my children in a Russian school.
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And when I put my children in this Russian school, I am not worried about what the teachers are going to teach my children.
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Because this is a country where men are men and women are women.
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In France, you remember maybe La Maniche Pour Tous? It was in 2012.
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Yeah, you were there. So probably we met on the streets, but we were more than one million.
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It was the very moment in France where the government decided, you know, to put and to teach to the very young children,
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six years old children, transgenderism, wokeism, and so on.
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And for me, it was, you know, the red line that I didn't want to cross.
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Back home, there's still an impression that Russia is really secretly communist.
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What have you got to say about that to people? I mean, it's hard to imagine because they're having traditional values in the school,
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where ours is the opposite. And we have to admit that. I think the West needs to be frank about their own situation.
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It's terrible. Your children are indoctrinated. We try everything to stop them from being so.
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But, you know, you get that anyway. But your experience here has been completely different.
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You were speaking about communism in Russia. This is very interesting because, yes, Russia used to be communist.
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It's not communist anymore. And even there is still a communist party in Russia.
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But it's very few people who are voting for them. And I can tell you something.
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The communist party in Russia is much more conservative than any nationalist, patriotic party that we have in France.
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For example, in France, the so-called patriotic party, political party, they are pro-abortion.
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They are now, they decided to say, OK, for gay wedding, no problem. We accept that.
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And that's true in America, too. The American Republican Party is officially pro-gay marriage.
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You know, they've thrown out now all of their... Because even under Trump, they did these things.
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They want to protect and defend. And Canada is much worse.
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Our conservatives are pro-abortion, pro-trans. They're pro-everything.
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The trans, that might be one place of movement for people. But that's it. It's unbelievable.
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It is unbelievable. And you know, even if in Russia, nothing is perfect, of course.
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And there are still some problems with abortion, with GPA and something like that.
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But what is interesting for me, it is a trend. You know, the trend in Western countries is going worse and worse.
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The trend here in Russia is that the conservative point of view, the conservative values are going stronger and stronger month after month, year after year.
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And this is very interesting to say that it became even more conservative after the beginning of the special operation.
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You're Catholic. And that's very interesting for people around the world because Russia is a big deal for Catholics.
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We've been praying for Russia for over 100 years. A lot of people said, oh, you know, with the consecration in 84 that John Paul did, Russia converted.
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They say it was the consecration. And maybe that's why Russia is getting better. Those who believe that Russia is getting better.
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And others say, no, it wasn't done. And I know from the faith, and I think all Catholics know, Russia has a very bright future.
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It will be the country that will, in my take of it anyway, will be one that brings the devotion to Our Lady, to the whole world.
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I don't know what you might think and others might think, but where do you think that's at?
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Because that's a really neat thing that is coming.
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It's the first time I'm here. I was here in 2014, and it was okay-ish, but things have gotten much, much better.
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And not just, you know, the idea of a Potemkin village. People said, oh, they're going to roll out to you and show.
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Well, actually, the more you look here, the more you see. It's incredible. And they've made a Potemkin country, maybe. I don't know.
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I was speaking at the beginning about the fact that I immediately, when I came in Russia for the first time,
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that I understood that Russia would be the future of the Christian Europe.
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I was speaking about the political point of view, but you know, as you said, and as I told you, I am a traditional Catholic.
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So I prayed for Russia for a long, long time, because of Notre Dame of Fatima, you know.
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And if I'm speaking now more about religious point of view, and this is very interesting to see that religious and politics are going on the same point.
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Of course, Russia will be also the future of all the Western Christian countries because of Fatima.
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But first, above everything, we need to understand that for that happen, we first need in Catholic religious to convert ourselves.
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Because the big problem now that we have is the problem with Vatican.
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We have many opportunities to make the consecration of Russia to the Holy Heart of the Holy Mother of God.
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And this is why I'm used to say to my Orthodox friends that, of course, I'm Catholic, you know, but we have many problems to solve also.
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It seems like one day, if things come together, the Russians might very well help the church get the faith right, too,
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because we seem to struggle in the very areas that they get right.
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The most repeated phrase in scripture is do not be afraid.
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We are called to speak the truth, to proclaim the gospel, and to live our lives without fear.
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For the past three years, we've brought this mission to the very heart of the church.
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At the Rome Life Forum, you won't just hear truth proclaimed.
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You'll have the chance to ask your questions directly to the speakers.
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This is your opportunity to engage, to challenge, and to go deeper into the battles we face today.
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Everybody thinks the popular thought in America is that, you know, the war started, Russia started the war in 2022.
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I started to go in Donbass for humanitarian mission on 2017, first time.
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So it was three years after the coup in Maidan, which held in 2014.
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For those who don't know, tell them. What's the coup in Maidan?
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The president of Ukraine at that time was Yanukovych.
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Nobody said anything against him in France, America.
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They were all like, okay, he was regularly elected. No problem.
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But because Yanukovych decided not to join European Union and Western countries, but to be more close with Russia,
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people from West, I would say this deep state of America and deep state of France and some other countries,
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And I remember that, for example, Victoria Nuland was there to support the demonstrator.
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In France, some very powerful people like Bernard-Henri Lévy, who went there to support the demonstrator.
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When these people were in this Maidan, Maidan is the biggest place in the Klochad place, yes, in Kiev.
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And all the color revolution held in this place.
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And Victoria Nuland, Bernard-Henri Lévy and some other Western people were speaking in front of very, very radical people,
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which were really Nazi, with the sign SS on their helmet.
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They were supporting these people against the democratic elected president.
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And this was very violent because Western countries supported them.
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They gave them weapons, they gave them money, they gave them a trainer, everything.
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And when the new one came, the new president, he immediately started to persecute people, Russified people.
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I mean, I'm not going to go inside the history because it could be very long.
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But Ukraine, all the east part of Ukraine, the people are speaking Russian.
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And the new president decided that from day to day, he signed a decree and he said now it's forbidden in Ukraine to speak Russian.
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Could you imagine that if someone told me, oh, if I were in France, you are not allowed now to speak any more French?
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No, you live here in Russia and you're not forbidden from speaking French.
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And these people, because they said, no, this is our roots.
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And they started to bomb them, to slaughter them.
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And then these people started to organize themselves into militias to defend and to protect the family, as any man has to do.
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I mean, if I wear them, I would have done the same, you know, to protect my wife and my children.
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The front line started to happen in the east part, in Donbass.
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And at that time already, the Western country was supporting the Kiev army.
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And they started to bomb every single day, the civilian people in Donbass.
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And when I came the first time in 2017, I saw that with my eyes.
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I saw many families who their house were bombed, destroyed, totally destroyed, children killed.
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And there were thousands of people who died because of this bombing from 2014 to 2022, when the special operation started.
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So it's totally false to say that Russia wanted to invite Ukraine to take more territory.
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Remember that Russia agreed to sign Minsk 2 agreement was supposed to just get more independence from Donbass.
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But they would stay inside the country of Ukraine.
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But because the Kiev government didn't respect this agreement and still continuing to bomb Donbass,
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at the end of the day, Russia was obliged to defend the civilian people.
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Because I would like to remember that not few people died from 2014 to 2022, but thousands of people.
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And we were paying some apartment from some poor family, which has the house totally destroyed.
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And to take them outside the front line in Donetsk city.
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And we found them apartment to live there with children because the husband was killed by the bomb,
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because some children were killed also by the bomb.
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And when I used to be in Donbass in the hotel, every day and night I hear the bombing in the city.
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It was very dangerous because Ukrainian army was bombing, blinding bombing.
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It's not like they were targeting any military or militia people.
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They were bombing school, hospital, hotel, on the street, everywhere.
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And this is why finally Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin decided to protect these civilian people
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The first genocide from the Second World War in Europe.
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Only people like us, very few people who went there.
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It's a very difficult thing that the world still doesn't know about.
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I just want to say that, you know, there is another point that I want to underline in this beautiful country.
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It's the fact that all the people here are supporting large families.
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You can speak to a driver of taxi, to the one who is in the restaurant,
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They are all supporting children, large families, family first.
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When I was in France, I had my six children in six years.
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And my wife had some work outside with all the children.
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Yes, because you are thinking only about you and not about the planet.
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You are going to make a lot of pollution to the world.
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Could you imagine that for a woman who wear lots of babies for many months of the sacrifice,
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And when I came here, and when the people on the street saw my family,
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And they were all saying, oh, you are a real hero.
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And for a woman, this is so important, you know, because I know what is it.
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And you know also, you are a father of lots of family.
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And I think that it is important for her to hear that sometimes.
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And this is very, very nice for educating children.
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I saw that when I went to, we went to see one of the services in the Catholic Church.
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And people outside and inside, even inside, because they stand for a long, long time.
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And they put the little children in front and get them a seat.
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You know, for example, when you take metro with your children.
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Moscow is a city where there is a lot of people, millions and millions of people.
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When you go with children inside the metro, people stand up and ask the woman and the children
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