The speech by D.G. Zavgaev, President of the Leo Tolstoy International Peace Prize Foundation, at the meeting The World Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots
Dear members of the Council,
Since our meeting in October last year, the Tolstoy Foundation has taken important new steps.
A full-scale campaign was held to review the candidates, award, and present the new public award, the Leo Tolstoy Peace Prize, which was established in Russia. The necessary information support was provided both in the Russian Federation and abroad.
The 2025 award winners were the presidents of the Central Asian republics: Kyrgyzstan's President Sadyr Japarov, Tajikistan's President Emomali Rahmon, and Uzbekistan's President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, for their significant contributions to promoting peace and security in Central Asia.
The award recognized their efforts in building a modern and successful model of interstate relations, resolving long-standing disputes, and reaching agreements that have contributed to the strengthening of good-neighborly relations and stability in Central Asia.
The values underlying the Peace Prize have generated a strong public interest around the world. In 2025 alone, media coverage of the prize, its recipients, and the award ceremony garnered over a billion views in various parts of the globe. This demonstrates the success and political maturity of the Leo Tolstoy International Peace Prize, as well as its high moral standing.
In this regard, I would like to quote the words of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, who, in his speech at the solemn ceremony of awarding the Peace Prize in December 2025 in St. Petersburg, emphasized that "the recent initiative to establish the Peace Prize named after Leo Tolstoy has proven to be highly relevant and has generated significant public and international attention. It is designed to promote unity around the noble ideas of peacekeeping, strengthening friendship between nations, protecting human rights and freedoms, and building a just multipolar world order based on the principles of sovereign equality and respect for each other's legitimate interests, as well as the supremacy of international law."
Taking into account the growing interest in the Peace Prize and its unique role as a tool of people's diplomacy, we would like to count on the enormous authority and potential of public organizations of Russian compatriots, who today duly represent our Motherland, successfully convey to the foreign audience the traditional moral and ethical values inherent in the peoples inhabiting our country, contribute to the objective perception of Russia's historical heritage and modern achievements abroad, and will convincingly promote the idea of strengthening peace and mutual understanding between nations, taking into account the country's specific features.
Undoubtedly, historical and memorial work remains an important tool of people's diplomacy, which, based on my own experience, allows us to find like-minded people in almost any country in the world. Preserving the memory and defending the historical truth about the events, outcomes, and lessons of the Great Patriotic War is of particular importance.
The content of work with young people is of exceptional importance. The growing generation, which is just beginning to form its value system, is currently under unprecedented attack.
Our opponents, who do not hide their destructive militaristic intentions and neo-colonialist aspirations, are deliberately using a strategy to falsify history and assert their own hegemony in the world.
I am convinced that there is still an inexhaustible array of new opportunities in this area, including through cooperation with the multi-million-member public movement Victory Volunteers (led by Olga Nikolaevna Zanko) to strengthen ties, engage in joint historical, memorial, and search activities, and involve young people in patriotic events using the rich experience accumulated both in Russia and abroad.
Working for the future, the L.N. Tolstoy International Peace Prize Foundation is systematically expanding its circle of active supporters and partners.
We have started to form an institution of the Foundation's Ambassadors, consisting of Russian and foreign public figures who have high authority and make a real contribution to strengthening peace and mutual understanding between nations.
Today, the high duties of the Ambassadors of the L.N. Tolstoy International Peace Prize Foundation are performed on a voluntary basis by an African politician, former Minister of the South African Government, Lindiwe Sisulu; - Valery Ivanovich Morozov, an Honored Worker of the Diplomatic Service of the Russian Federation, Ambassador; - Maria Valeryevna Butina, a member of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs; - Stanislav Aleksandrovich Naumov, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy.
It is very important that many of our compatriots enjoy significant influence and authority in their countries of residence, and have well-developed ties with the local community. We would be happy to receive well-reasoned proposals from compatriots' organizations regarding candidates for the title of Ambassador of the Foundation, as well as for the award of the Prize in accordance with the provisions of its Statute.
We are also considering other formats for our possible cooperation, including in order consolidating the positive perception of our country abroad.
We are establishing close cooperation with Russian regions. Many of them have expressed their readiness to cooperate with the Foundation on our agenda.
We are working purposefully to involve more and more representatives of culture and art, traditional religions, and the media in the activities of the Foundation. Recently, on June 5, 2023, the Foundation for the International Peace Prize named after Leo Tolstoy, together with the Russian Historical Society, held a roundtable discussion titled "Literature in the Era of Global Turbulence" as part of the 12th Krasnaya Ploshchad Book Festival. Prominent Russian and foreign writers and experts participated in the discussion.
In particular, the jury member of the Peace Prize, Achala Maulik, is a well-known Indian writer who published a book this year that has attracted the attention of the English-speaking community around the world with her "non-Western" perspective on the history of centuries-old relations between Russia and Europe. This year, we plan to present this book, which is being published in our country in Russian with the support of the Leo Tolstoy International Peace Prize Foundation.
As it seems, all this gives us the opportunity to count on the progressive development of our ties with the compatriots movement and other partners in close coordination with the Governmental Commission for the Affairs of Compatriots Abroad, the Department for Work with Compatriots Abroad of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the World Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots.
Thanks for attention.
Moscow, June 16, 2026
Dear members of the Council,
Since our meeting in October last year, the Tolstoy Foundation has taken important new steps.
A full-scale campaign was held to review the candidates, award, and present the new public award, the Leo Tolstoy Peace Prize, which was established in Russia. The necessary information support was provided both in the Russian Federation and abroad.
The 2025 award winners were the presidents of the Central Asian republics: Kyrgyzstan's President Sadyr Japarov, Tajikistan's President Emomali Rahmon, and Uzbekistan's President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, for their significant contributions to promoting peace and security in Central Asia.
The award recognized their efforts in building a modern and successful model of interstate relations, resolving long-standing disputes, and reaching agreements that have contributed to the strengthening of good-neighborly relations and stability in Central Asia.
The values underlying the Peace Prize have generated a strong public interest around the world. In 2025 alone, media coverage of the prize, its recipients, and the award ceremony garnered over a billion views in various parts of the globe. This demonstrates the success and political maturity of the Leo Tolstoy International Peace Prize, as well as its high moral standing.
In this regard, I would like to quote the words of the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, who, in his speech at the solemn ceremony of awarding the Peace Prize in December 2025 in St. Petersburg, emphasized that "the recent initiative to establish the Peace Prize named after Leo Tolstoy has proven to be highly relevant and has generated significant public and international attention. It is designed to promote unity around the noble ideas of peacekeeping, strengthening friendship between nations, protecting human rights and freedoms, and building a just multipolar world order based on the principles of sovereign equality and respect for each other's legitimate interests, as well as the supremacy of international law."
Taking into account the growing interest in the Peace Prize and its unique role as a tool of people's diplomacy, we would like to count on the enormous authority and potential of public organizations of Russian compatriots, who today duly represent our Motherland, successfully convey to the foreign audience the traditional moral and ethical values inherent in the peoples inhabiting our country, contribute to the objective perception of Russia's historical heritage and modern achievements abroad, and will convincingly promote the idea of strengthening peace and mutual understanding between nations, taking into account the country's specific features.
Undoubtedly, historical and memorial work remains an important tool of people's diplomacy, which, based on my own experience, allows us to find like-minded people in almost any country in the world. Preserving the memory and defending the historical truth about the events, outcomes, and lessons of the Great Patriotic War is of particular importance.
The content of work with young people is of exceptional importance. The growing generation, which is just beginning to form its value system, is currently under unprecedented attack.
Our opponents, who do not hide their destructive militaristic intentions and neo-colonialist aspirations, are deliberately using a strategy to falsify history and assert their own hegemony in the world.
I am convinced that there is still an inexhaustible array of new opportunities in this area, including through cooperation with the multi-million-member public movement Victory Volunteers (led by Olga Nikolaevna Zanko) to strengthen ties, engage in joint historical, memorial, and search activities, and involve young people in patriotic events using the rich experience accumulated both in Russia and abroad.
Working for the future, the L.N. Tolstoy International Peace Prize Foundation is systematically expanding its circle of active supporters and partners.
We have started to form an institution of the Foundation's Ambassadors, consisting of Russian and foreign public figures who have high authority and make a real contribution to strengthening peace and mutual understanding between nations.
Today, the high duties of the Ambassadors of the L.N. Tolstoy International Peace Prize Foundation are performed on a voluntary basis by an African politician, former Minister of the South African Government, Lindiwe Sisulu; - Valery Ivanovich Morozov, an Honored Worker of the Diplomatic Service of the Russian Federation, Ambassador; - Maria Valeryevna Butina, a member of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs; - Stanislav Aleksandrovich Naumov, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy.
It is very important that many of our compatriots enjoy significant influence and authority in their countries of residence, and have well-developed ties with the local community. We would be happy to receive well-reasoned proposals from compatriots' organizations regarding candidates for the title of Ambassador of the Foundation, as well as for the award of the Prize in accordance with the provisions of its Statute.
We are also considering other formats for our possible cooperation, including in order consolidating the positive perception of our country abroad.
We are establishing close cooperation with Russian regions. Many of them have expressed their readiness to cooperate with the Foundation on our agenda.
We are working purposefully to involve more and more representatives of culture and art, traditional religions, and the media in the activities of the Foundation. Recently, on June 5, 2023, the Foundation for the International Peace Prize named after Leo Tolstoy, together with the Russian Historical Society, held a roundtable discussion titled "Literature in the Era of Global Turbulence" as part of the 12th Krasnaya Ploshchad Book Festival. Prominent Russian and foreign writers and experts participated in the discussion.
In particular, the jury member of the Peace Prize, Achala Maulik, is a well-known Indian writer who published a book this year that has attracted the attention of the English-speaking community around the world with her "non-Western" perspective on the history of centuries-old relations between Russia and Europe. This year, we plan to present this book, which is being published in our country in Russian with the support of the Leo Tolstoy International Peace Prize Foundation.
As it seems, all this gives us the opportunity to count on the progressive development of our ties with the compatriots movement and other partners in close coordination with the Governmental Commission for the Affairs of Compatriots Abroad, the Department for Work with Compatriots Abroad of the Russian Foreign Ministry and the World Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots.
Thanks for attention.
Moscow, June 16, 2026
