Russia will do “everything” to protect its ethnic brethren living abroad from threats and persecution, President Vladimir Putin said.
The Kremlin has stepped up pledges to defend the rights of those it considers “compatriots” -- a broad category covering mainly ethnic Russians and speakers of the language living in other former Soviet states -- from official pressure. Protecting the “Russian World” became a major theme in the government’s defense of its 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in Ukraine.
