Said Gafurov told us that back in January, Russian President Vladimir Putin was asked if Scotland would be welcome in the Eurasian Customs Union in the event it became independent, and he responded that it would be considered.

"It was a joke and everybody took it as a joke but until now the Russian media believed that there is a huge rift between public opinion and the 'establishment', the bureaucracy of the European Union. This rift is getting bigger and everybody believes that's a sign of increased distance between the public who elect government, and the bureaucracy which isn't elected but governs everything."

Asked how Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond's admiration for some of Putin's policies went down, Gafurov says Russians on the whole don't really have much sense of Scotland, which they think has been at loggerheads with the rest of Britain since about the 15th century. They tend to see things in a historical context, on the one hand, and on the other, there's a lot of hard-headed speculation about how the referendum result will go down with the oil industry.

Russians are also more concerned about the issue of NATO and defence than the concept of Britain as a nation, he says.

Regarding independence movements in Russia, he told VoR that they are not that strong because of prevailing economic and financial ties. "Oil money generally goes to the federal budget in Moscow and taxes go to the regional budgets. Moscow supports some 70 or 80 percent of all income for the regional budget in some areas. Moscow isn't afraid of pro-independence movements because we are a very scarcely populated country."

With regard to China, he says economics are decisive in relation to politics, and that with everybody trying to attack China right now, it would probably welcome anything that would weaken other major nations. He says China would definitely try to strengthen ties with Scotland and encourage Chinese companies to get into the Scottish market were it to become independent. 

(VoR)

http://voiceofrussia.com/uk/news/2014_09_18/Scotland-the-ballot-box-and-the-view-from-the-Kremlin-2487/