An ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested during a recent broadcast that a new civil war in the United States would be “good for the world.”
Suggestions and insinuations about a second American civil war have become increasingly more common as the political divides in the U.S. have grown starker and more polarized. Throughout the summer, numerous Republicans suggested that a civil war would break out over the multiple criminal indictments leveled against former President Donald Trump. Trump, who maintains his innocence in each case and the frontrunner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, shared a social media post discussing a looming civil war in May, resulting in a considerable backlash.
On Saturday, Julia Davis, founder of the Russian Media Monitor watchdog group, shared a clip to X, the platform previously known as Twitter, from a recent state-run media broadcast in Russia. In the clip, Sergei Markov, a notably pro-Putin political scientist and former adviser to the Russian leader, suggested that the outbreak of a civil war in the U.S. would also be beneficial to Russia and would result in the end of its conflict with Ukraine.
“I think this means there will be a civil war in America,” Markov said, when suggesting what Russia’s symbol for the new year, the “Wood Dragon,” had in store for them. “I think it’s logical…Yes, the dragon will get them, that’s good for the world.”
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When host Evgeny Popov interjected, suggesting that Russia does not “wish war on anyone, even Americans,” Markov doubled down.
“No, we do wish it,” Markov continued. “We know if something really starts in America, civil war in Ukraine will stop one week later. [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky and [Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valerii] Zaluzhny will race all the way over here…They would go to mediators and say, ‘Let’s immediately put an end to all this.’ Because this regime is a typical junta, I would say, a colonial junta. We wish ourselves peace in the new year, and for those living in Ukraine to get rid of this colonial junta America forced upon them.”
Newsweek reached out to global defense experts via email for comment.
Former Russian President and Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev was recently the subject of mockery after most of the predictions he made for 2023 failed to come to pass. Among his list of predictions was that the U.S. would descend into civil war, resulting in Texas and California becoming independent nations and Texas forming a partnership with Mexico. He also predicted that the civil war would then end and that businessman Elon Musk would be made president in the aftermath.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.